SOPA protest, or just the work of a hacker that was passing by?

Feb 2, 2012 13:51 GMT  ·  By

Unnamed hackers managed to breach the website of Universal Music Portugal, publishing in a Pastebin document all the information they could find in their databases.

Cyberwarnews reports that 314 valid email addresses, usernames and passwords, all in clear-text, were made available by the hackers.

Shortly after the hack took place, universalmusic.pt was taken offline, probably while its administrators were assessing the extension of the damages, but at press time the website is back online.

It’s uncertain if this operation was part of a SOPA protest, but it shouldn't surprise anyone if it was, especially since a lot of similar websites were forcefully taken offline after the authorities closed Megaupload.

However, this is not the worst part. Vulnerable websites will always exist, but it’s a shame that after the large number of incidents administrators fail to encrypt sensitive data stored in their site's databases.