The Pirate Bay hacked, user information exposed

It’s one problem after another for the (in)famous file-sharing Web site.

Dogged by the music and movie industry, its founders are defending themselves and their creation in the court of law and the site is in danger of getting its domain seized by the US Government.

But this latest development could prove even more damaging to the site – and it’s users. A group of Argentinian hackers (or, as they call themselves, security researchers) has discovered multiple SQL injection vulnerabilities that allowed them to access the site’s administration panel and, through it, information regarding its members.

Usernames, e-mail and IP addresses, the number and name of torrents uploaded by users, and other data could be viewed, modified or deleted by the group, although they claim that they did not alter or delete any of it. As they told Brian Krebs, their goal was to show to the users that their information is not adequately protected.

They admit that they have thought about how much this information would be worth to all those anti-piracy companies and associations that are set on bringing The Pirate Bay down and on persecuting everyone who uses the site, but they claim that they are not trying to sell the information to them or to anyone else.

Krebs received confirmation of the hack when he shared his TPB username with Russo, and Russo reciprocated by sending him the matching e-mail address and a hash of the password.

Russo says that the site administrators seem to have already patched the vulnerabilities, although administrators have yet to offer a comment on the situation. The site was down for a while, sporting a simple line of text that said “Upgrading some stuff, database is in use for backups, soon back again.. Btw, it’s nice weather outside I think,” but is now back up again.

Don't miss