HACKERS HAVE EXPLOITED a security vulnerability at the Bittorrent tracking website Pirate Bay, hacked its user database and harvested personal information to send out spam.
Some Pirate Bay users have reported receiving dodgy spam emails claiming to come as official mail from the website. The spammers hardly pushed to make them seem like legitimate emails because they said users can make money from the website. Oh, really?
The dodgy emails were sent to the Bittorrent news website Torrent Freak and Pirate Bay responded to say it hadn't sent any emails out to its users but it hasn't offered a response as to how its database was breached.
"A course has been put together to show you how to use The Pirate Bay to make some serious money. This seriously works," said the spam.
The spam is an obvious fraud but it will be a worry to the chaps at the Pirate Bay because it highlights that the website has a security flaw and its database has been compromised.
Pirate Bay should be worried because its back end has been hacked on several occasions and it's possible that the spammers are exploiting the same vulnerability and personal information they grabbed before.
Last year a group of Argentinean hackers got into The Pirate Bay's website admininistration panel but only to highlight system vulnerabilities. Then only two months later after Pirate Bay said it patched the hole, it was hit by spammers.
One user told Torrent Freak he'd only used the email address he used to sign up to Pirate Bay once, which suggests that the email addresses definitely came from Pirate Bay's hacked database.
The dodgy emails were sent to the Bittorrent news website Torrent Freak and Pirate Bay responded to say it hadn't sent any emails out to its users but it hasn't offered a response as to how its database was breached.
"A course has been put together to show you how to use The Pirate Bay to make some serious money. This seriously works," said the spam.
The spam is an obvious fraud but it will be a worry to the chaps at the Pirate Bay because it highlights that the website has a security flaw and its database has been compromised.
Pirate Bay should be worried because its back end has been hacked on several occasions and it's possible that the spammers are exploiting the same vulnerability and personal information they grabbed before.
Last year a group of Argentinean hackers got into The Pirate Bay's website admininistration panel but only to highlight system vulnerabilities. Then only two months later after Pirate Bay said it patched the hole, it was hit by spammers.
One user told Torrent Freak he'd only used the email address he used to sign up to Pirate Bay once, which suggests that the email addresses definitely came from Pirate Bay's hacked database.
