The American porn site Luscious, specialized in drawings from the world of manga type "hentai" suffered an unprecedented data leak, reveals Le Parisien .
Professional email addresses
The server of the website, containing the personal data of its 1.2 million members, remained open to the public. Among its members, Luscious has nearly 40,000 French. The flaw was detected on August 15 by researchers from the company vpnMentor, specializing in cybersecurity, and was corrected Monday.
Everyone then had access to the email address of users, their activity on the site or their country of residence. The anonymity of the members of Luscious is also threatened by the escape of their full name, when they have informed at the time of registration. According to the newspaper, the personal data that leaked do not contain the password of the members.
13.000 mail addresses ending with .fr would have been discovered in the list, but the researchers who investigated this leak indicate that in fact, three times more French would be concerned. The long list also included professional email addresses linked to official administrations, used by Brazilian, Italian or Australian members.
Risk of blackmail
Such a leak represents a real danger for users. The personal data of members can be used against them, especially in the context of financial blackmail. Hackers can also use email addresses to perform phishing campaigns. It is therefore recommended that users modify their login information and, in general, not to fill in any personal information on sensitive sites.
Faced with these risks, the pornographic site responded to the American media TechCrunch. The owner of Luscious said he would "contact users whose data is compromised to alert them to the potential risk of compromising their email addresses."