Adult Friend Finder: Data from 412 million accounts 'hacked' on sex website

Customer email addresses, dates of last visits and password information reportedly breached

Internet piracy

The private information of more than 400 million adult website customers has been compromised in the largest data breach ever recorded, according to reports.

Friend Finder Network Inc reportedly had 412 million of its accounts hacked last month, the majority from Adult Friend Finder, a website that describes itself as "the world's largest sex and swinger community".

Email addresses, passwords, dates of last visits, browser information, IP addresses and site membership status across sites run by the network were revealed, claims Leaked Source, a data breach monitoring website.

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"Among the leaked account details were 78,301 US military email addresses, 5,650 US government email addresses and over 96 million Hotmail accounts," says The Guardian. The leaked database also included the details of what appear to be almost 16 million deleted accounts, according to Leaked Source.

It is unclear at this time who is responsible for the alleged hack but it bears a striking similarity to an attack against Adult Friend Finder in May 2015, in which login details, emails, dates of birth, post codes, sexual preferences and details of whether customers were seeking extramarital affairs were all leaked.

"It's clear that the organisation has failed to learn from its past mistakes and the result is 412 million victims that will be prime targets for blackmail, phishing attacks and other cyber fraud," said David Kennerley, director of threat research at Webroot.

In a statement to the Washington Post, Friend Finder Network said it was investigating the situation, but refused to confirm or deny the hack. "Immediately upon learning this information, we took several steps to review the situation and bring in the right external partners to support our investigation," it said.

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