Details of more than 2.28 million users, registered on a dating website, called MeetMindful.com, were leaked by a hacker. According to a new report, the accessed data, 1.2 GB file, has been shared on a publicly accessible hacking forum.
The data appeared to be a dump of the dating site's user database. The content of leaked data includes all the information which the users provided while setting up their profiles on the MeetMindful site which was founded in 2014.
Some of the leaked details include names of the users, their email address, birth dates, city-state-zip details, body details, dating preferences, marital status, IP addresses and bcrypt-hashed account passwords.
The hacker also obtained and shared information on the forum about Facebook user IDs and the authentication tokens. However, messages exchanged by the users were not included in the leaked files, the report said.
The Threat
Even though not all the leaked dating accounts included complete details, ZDNet reported that the shared data can be used to track users' dating profiles back to their real identities. Since in recent years sextortion cases have increased, cybercriminals can seek ransom in exchange for keeping vulnerable users' dating history, family and work colleague details safe.
The data on the publicly accessible hacking forum thread has been viewed more than 1,500 times and many people may have downloaded the leaked information.
The threat actor who accessed the dating site and leaked the obtained data goes by the name ShinyHunters. This week, the same hacker reportedly leaked details of millions of users registers on the e-commerce company, Teespring—a company based in California, US.
However, currently, the hacked site, MeetMindful.com, is showing "Error 1020 Access Denied". The error code appears when the site operator changes or adds a rule to the Cloudflare firewall to deny access to users. Cloudflare provides security to websites. It is possible that the site has locked users out due to the cyberattack and data dump. But the leak of such sensitive data has shown an impending issue for the users of the dating site. It is now up to the platform whether they will notify the account holders or not.
