AdultFriendFinder Breached: Information For Over 400 Million Accounts Leaked

If you ever signed up for dating website AdultFriendFinder, you should know that in all likeliness, your basic information is part of a new leak affecting over 400 million accounts. The target was Friend Finder Networks, and AdultFriendFinder is responsible for at least 340 million of these accounts. The other chunk of the leak involves user information from websites Cams(.com), Penthouse(.com), Stripshow(.com), and iCams(.com).

The number of users affected in this leak is enormous – at least 10x the number of people affected by the breach of AshleyMadison(.com) last year. Unlike that breach, though, this one includes more basic information: email addresses, passwords, and registration dates. However, simple information or not, some people no doubt stand to be put in a bad situation if the fact that they signed up for any one of these websites gets out into the wild. Following the AshleyMadison attack, some users were blackmailed to keep the fact that they had signed up for the service secret.

While passwords were encrypted throughout Friend Finder Networks’ Web properties, it was apparently done in a very insecure manner, as firm LeakedSource, which monitors data breaches, claims it’s been able to crack 99% of the encrypted passwords found. It seems somewhat likely that these websites were using a deprecated security scheme that was simply never upgraded over the years due to lack of care. It’s been said that some of these accounts involved in the leak signed up for an account 20 years ago.

What’s truly foolish about this particular attack is that AdultFriendFinder had put out a small fire last spring when the information of close to 4 million accounts began circulating online. That apparently wasn’t enough of a hint to get the company to take security more seriously, as this latest breach took place only last month.

If you were a member of any one of these websites and really don’t want your information to get out there, you better get to crossing your fingers. And, if you are affected by this, this episode is the latest of many to prove that using anonymous accounts when signing up for dating websites is a smart move. This kind of leak is becoming a wee bit too common.