Pornhub Premium users’ data could be exposed if hackers’ demands go unmet

Pornhub

A hacking group known as ShinyHunters has claimed it has stolen sensitive data belonging to premium users of Pornhub and is now threatening to make that information public unless it is paid a ransom.

The group told Reuters on Tuesday that it is demanding payment in Bitcoin in exchange for deleting the data and stopping its release. While the full scale of the breach is still unclear, ShinyHunters shared a small sample of the data with Reuters, some of which the news agency was able to partially verify.

At least three former Pornhub premium customers — two men in Canada and one in the United States — confirmed to Reuters that the information linked to them appeared to be genuine, though several years old. Because of the sensitive nature of the website and the potential consequences of exposure, all three spoke on condition of anonymity.

Pornhub is one of the world’s most visited adult websites, claiming more than 100 million daily visits and around 36 billion visits annually. While much of its content is free, the platform also offers a paid “Premium” subscription that includes features such as high-definition videos, an ad-free experience and virtual reality content.

According to ShinyHunters, the stolen data relates to users of this premium service. The hackers shared information that they said belonged to 14 premium users. Reuters was able to match details of six people in the dataset with information from older data breaches that had previously circulated online and were tracked by dark web intelligence firm District 4 Labs. Three of those individuals confirmed they had once subscribed to Pornhub Premium.

It is still not known how ShinyHunters obtained the data. The group declined to explain the method used to access it. Pornhub and its owner, Ethical Capital Partners, which is based in Ottawa, Canada, did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Earlier this month, Pornhub acknowledged a cybersecurity incident involving Mixpanel, a third-party data analytics company it works with. Pornhub said the issue affected an undisclosed number of premium users and involved a limited set of analytics data within Mixpanel’s systems.

Mixpanel, however, has denied that the leaked data came from its recent security incident. The company said it had thoroughly investigated the breach with external cybersecurity experts and was confident that Pornhub was not affected. Mixpanel also said that Pornhub’s data had last been accessed by a legitimate employee account at Pornhub’s parent company in 2023.

ShinyHunters has insisted the data is connected to the Mixpanel incident, a claim Mixpanel strongly disputes.

The group is no stranger to the spotlight. ShinyHunters has been linked to several high-profile data breaches and extortion attempts in recent months, including attacks involving Salesforce customers and luxury retailers in the UK.