14 DAY TRIAL // Personal info of thousands of users has been published online by hackers operating under the banner name of Anonymous. Some of the log-in credentials belong to customers of services such as PlayStation Network, Amazon, Walmart, and Xbox Live.
Apart from the username and password combination, the document also contains card numbers along with expiration dates and their CVVs (card verification value) codes. If valid, this information can be used for online purchases.
Emails appear in other leaks
AnonymousGlobo, the group that released the info, said on Twitter that the reason behind their action was just to have some fun. This may be true, indeed, as some of the pieces we verified also occurred in other leaks, some as old as 2012.
At the moment, the link in the tweet from AnonymousGlobo is no longer working, but the database is available on other document sharing websites than Ghostbin, where it was originally hosted.
Also available in the leaked data are promotional keys for the CyberGhost VPN service, which the company generates in order to provide them free of charge in giveaway campaigns or raffles.
Although this may still seem like something to take advantage of, Robert Knapp, CyberGhost co-founder and CEO, has told us via email that they are no longer valid as they’ve been blocked for about a month.
A company representative told us that the data of CyberGhost customers was not in danger at all, since the company does not retain any information from the customers and email addresses are not associated with the service accounts.
We also checked some of the card information and many of the numbers also appeared in other leaks. In this case, the details have most likely been invalidated by the financial institutions that issued the cards.
Online fame is generally the purpose of leaking credentials
The fact that the information is old means that it is not the result of a new hack of the affected services.
Recycling information from old leaks is a practice many fame-seeking individuals resort to in order to increase their online followership. In the case of AnonymousGlobo, this method seems to work, as they now have more than 30,000 followers on Twitter.
It must be mentioned that we did not check the entire database and some data may still be valid, if users have not changed their passwords. Log-in details of customers of Hulu Plus, Twitch.tv, Dell, and several adult websites are also available in the database.
A total of approximately 13k accounts. We did for the Lulz. https://t.co/J65y8NLCLV #Anonymous #AntiSec #LulzXmas
— Anonymous (@AnonymousGlobo) December 26, 2014