ShinyHunters Claims Pornhub Data Theft, Demands Ransom

A notorious hacking group known as ShinyHunters has claimed responsibility for stealing sensitive user data from Pornhub's premium service, threatening to release the information unless the company pays a ransom in cryptocurrency. The breach, disclosed by Pornhub on December 12, involves analytics data from a third-party provider and affects an undisclosed number of premium subscribers worldwide.

Pornhub, a Canadian-owned adult video platform that attracts more than 100 million daily visits, stated that the incident occurred within the systems of Mixpanel, a data analytics firm it formerly used. According to the company's announcement, an unauthorized party accessed a limited set of analytics events related to some premium users, but the site's own infrastructure remained secure. Passwords, payment details, and financial information were not compromised, Pornhub emphasized.

ShinyHunters, which described the stolen dataset as containing 94 gigabytes and over 200 million records, asserted that the information includes email addresses, user locations, viewing and search histories, video titles, keywords, and timestamps for activities such as watching or downloading content. The...