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Adult Network Brazzers Hacked, 800,000 User Accounts Stolen

By Paul Liu
Monday, July 5th, 2021

Hacking of big and popular websites has now become a routine occurrence. In early September, popular adult network Brazzers became the target of a data breach when it came to light that hackers were trying to sell as many as 800,000 user accounts associated with its sites on the dark web. The leak is highly embarrassing for those affected since it originated from Brazzers official forum where the members not only discuss their favorite actors and scenes, they can also request for new scenes based on their fantasies.

The news of the data breach was first published by the security site Motherboard. As per Motherboard, it was provided with a dataset of 928,072 Brazzersforum.com accounts (790,724 unique records) by the breach monitoring service Vigilante.pw for verification and validation purposes. The dataset supplied by Vigilante.pw contained Brazzersforum.com usernames, passwords as well as associated email addresses in plain text format. Motherboard turned to “Have I Been Pwned?” to confirm the authenticity of the data whose creator Troy Hunt contacted his own subscribers for the purpose. A number of Troy’s subscribers responded back and confirmed that the details in the leak were authentic and correct.

When contacted by the news outlets, Brazzers spokesman Matt Stevens confirmed that the data leaked in the breach matched with a security incident that occurred in 2012. He also emphasized that the breach occurred due to the vulnerabilities present in the forum software vBulletin and not because of the security infrastructure of Brazzers itself. However, he also admitted that since many users accounts were shared across Brazzersforum.com and other Brazzers websites, the security of small number of Brazzers accounts was compromised. There was no explanation from Matt regarding why the news of the leak was not shared with the users or why it took so long for the company to admit the data breach.

Brazzers shut down Brazzersforum.com for maintenance as soon as the news of the data breach was made public. Matt also said that the leaked data set contained many duplicate and non-functional accounts which have since been deactivated. This was done to prevent those account details from being reused in the future. Matt also reassured media outlets that Brazzers takes the privacy and safety of its users very seriously.

Since the breach is related to a forum, it raises the possibility that the same details are valid for many other forums as well. A lot of users use the same set of usernames and passwords for the forums they join so the breach not only affects the Brazzers network but also hundreds or even thousands of other sites. Some subscribers of “Have I Been Pwned?” revealed that their email addresses were used to create Brazzersforum.com account without their knowledge. So it can be said that the implications of this data leak are far more severe than what appears at the first glance. If you are a Brazzers user then you must use change your credentials immediately. It is also a good idea to use a throwaway email address for adult and non-essential services.