A hacker impersonating a famous cybersecurity writer is now selling Wattpad’s database for free! The database containing 271 million user records was previously been traded for 10 Bitcoins, but now being sold for free in a hacker’s forum. Wattpad says sensitive data other than encrypted passwords aren’t breached.

Wattpad Database of 271 Million Records Sold For Free!

Wattpad is a notepad application, but for everyone. This user-generated platform contains stories of several genres. Though the platform reported to be having about 80 million total users in 2019, the hacker in question claims his database has more than 270 million user records. Wattpad is a popular site that ranks as 150th most visited site worldwide.

As tracked by BleepingComputer, a stolen database of Wattpad is being sold in a hacker forum for free! The same database was previously traded for 10 Bitcoins ($100,000), as reported by Cyble, a cybersecurity firm. BleepingComputer verified few user account details from the database samples, and one user returned it true. The authors behind this attack are claimed to be Shiny Hunters, who previously hacked many known firms.

The database contained users’ names, hashed passwords, email addresses, and general geographic location. Out of total 271 million user accounts, and linked passwords in the database, 145 million are encrypted with bcrypt algorithm and 44 million are with SHA256 algorithm.

The hacker, who just got registered in the hacker forum with the name Kaitlyn Cimpanu, is selling the database for free. The name he chose resembled Catalin Cimpanu, a famous cybersecurity writer of ZDNet. May this because he covered an article on Vinny Troia’s revelations of Shiny Hunters gang today.

Lately, the Kiel Hume, Director of PR & Communications at Wattpad said that no financial information, stories, private messages or phone numbers were breached in this incident, and are completely safe. Further, they’re working on containing and remediation of this breach by working with external security consultants.

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