Dating websites breached, sensitive data and messages compromised

A pair of dating sites in the US have suffered a data breach, leading to some very sensitive user information leaking online.

An anonymous source informed Troy Hunt of Have I Been Pwned, who confirmed the loss of data, which includes usernames, IP information, location, dates of birth, and sexual orientations. Private chat logs have also been breached, as well as passwords — which were stored as salted MD5 hashes.

The sites in question are for more casual hook-ups — one is CityJerks, a site focused purely on people looking for partners for mutual masturbation, and TruckerSuckers, which is for “REAL TRUCKERS and REAL MEN”.

Both sites also have apps on Google and Android devices.

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The hacker is currently selling the two datasets on a dark web forum — there are 8,000 sets of data from TruckerSuckers and 77,000 sets from CityJerks, according to the person selling the data. But Hunt places the number of people affected at 177,554.

“It’s really just a typical forum breach, albeit with super sensitive content,” Hunt told TechCrunch after revealing the hack.

Many of the messages are quite explicit and could be prime material for future blackmail or other exploitation. “I will b in Jackson on business during the day on Nov.13 if interested message back I won’t have a place, will u?” read one.

While the breach occurred in February and was only confirmed by Hunt this week, neither site has posted any notice of the breach for their users.

David Hollingworth

David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.