I was surprised to learn that Clixsense has been hacked. When I tried to log in with my password I got the message that they have change it. ClixSense is a website in which members are paid to view ads and take surveys. The massive data breach compromised 6.6 million user accounts.
Normally if the data breach is this huge, the information stolen contains usernames, passwords, and some other personal information, but due to the nature of ClixSense and the service it provided, home addresses, payment histories, and other banking details have also been compromised.
A message posted on PasteBin shows a sample of the stolen data which includes, social security numbers, dates of birth, and some internal emails from ClixSense may also have been compromised.
Ars Technica reported this morning that about 2.2 million people have had their data posted to PasteBin over the weekend, reportedly just a taste of the 6.6 million user accounts that have been stolen.
ClixSense owner Jim Grago said that their website had been hijacked on September 4 but the firm managed to regain control of their DNS over Labor Day weekend. In addition to the user information stolen, it appears that the company’s internal email server was also compromised, including “70,000 emails” according to the post on PasteBin advertising the hack.
The hackers responsible said on their PasteBin post that they want to sell the user information they have obtained, but they didn't say how much. PasteBin has since removed the posts and the sample of the compromised user account information.
On September 11, ClixSense acknowledged the hack in a news post on its website. It said that the hacker did get access to their database server for a short period of time. And that he was able to gain access to this not directly but instead through an old server that they were no longer using but still had a connection to their database server. This server has since been terminated. The hacker was able to copy most if not all of the users table, he ran some SQL code that changed the names on accounts to "hacked account" and deleted many forum posts. He also set user balances to $0.00.
Users were forced to change their passwords shortly after the hack began, but if you’re a ClixSense user it would be a good idea to reset all of your current passwords for other services likes email, Paypal or another PTC site, and make sure your security questions don’t overlap with any of the information you provided to ClixSense including your date of birth, address, or other identifying information.
Well, ClixSense is good PTC site were you can earn money that's why they were hacked. And I'm sure that they have updated their security to prevent data breach like this in the future.
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