Neopets Hacker Steals 69 Million Accounts, Tries To Sell Them For Bitcoin
Image: Neopets
A rogue hacker has reportedly stolen over 69 million Neopets accounts, and is presently trying to promote the knowledge for roughly $92,000 in bitcoin.
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Neopets is a long-running digital pet web site the place customers can gown up their pets, play minigames, take part in a digital financial system, and socialize with different members of the group. Users can spend actual cash to unlock further costumes, take away advertisements, and achieve entry to further sport perks. However, memberships can solely be bought with a bank card and figuring out info. While Neopets has existed since 1999, the web site nonetheless has almost 4 million guests monthly as of April this yr.
The group fansite Jellyneo reported that the hacker was in a position to get hold of “the complete data and source code” of the web site, which implies that all accounts’ emails and passwords are doubtlessly compromised. This morning, Neopets acknowledged that “customers’ data may have been stolen.” However, it didn’t acknowledge the scale of the breach, or whether or not or not bank card info was additionally affected. Neopets workers additionally requested customers to vary their login passwords. Kotaku reached out to Neopets to ask whether or not or not monetary knowledge had been compromised, however didn’t obtain a response on the time of publication.
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Jellyneo claimed that e mail handle, passwords, gender, IP addresses, nations, and birthdays had been all being bought on a “hacker website” for 4 bitcoin. At the time of writing, 4 bitcoin is price $92,072. Although bitcoin is traceable, hackers favor to make use of it for legal actions as a result of wallets don’t require figuring out info and legislation enforcement can’t freeze the accounts. Neopets is presently working with a forensics agency and legislation enforcement to be able to examine the breach.
This isn’t the primary time that Neopets had run afoul of the group prior to now yr. Last September, followers had been in uproar because the workers introduced that they might be taking part in an NFT collaboration. And going again even additional, Neopets had one other main breach in March 2021 the place hackers had stolen uncommon pets and bought them on the black market. While the positioning has continued to draw a cult following, a few of that group has included hackers who promote a black market of Neopets the place digital animals find yourself stolen from their homeowners.
