Pirate IPTV Services Blackmailed by Hacker Who Stole User ID Data
- Two popular IPTV platforms are being blackmailed by a hacker who allegedly stole user data.
- The threat is to send this data to the police and have the users exposed to legal action.
- Besides paying a ransom, the hacker is also giving the option of shutting down the services.
A hacker has breached into two separate but apparently linked pirate IPTV services and claims to have stolen user identification details. The person is now threatening to share this data with the police unless the platform operators pay a ransom of approximately $93,000 in Bitcoin.
This is very similar to what we’ve seen happening to ‘Helix Hosting IPTV’ in December 2019, but this time, the victims are ‘KS-Hosting.com’ and ‘SapphireSecure.net.’ At the time of writing this, the first website has gone offline, and the latter remains up.
A bit earlier, the hackers defaced the sites and posted messages that made the compromise clear, informing the visitors of the following:
The hacker claims that the demanded amount is just two weeks' worth of revenue for the pirate IPTV platforms, so if the owner - who is allegedly the same person - chooses not to pay, it will be a demonstration of greediness. Weirdly enough, the hacker gives the platform operator an alternative way to stop the people’s data leak, which is to shut down the services and give full refunds to the subscribers.
This is something that makes no sense coming from someone who has no apparent benefit from seeing the two sites being shut down unless that person is a copyright holder, a member of an intellectual property protection group, or the agent of a competing IPTV platform.
The shared wallet address hasn’t received any payments yet, so the case could have any outcome at any moment. If you are a subscriber of either platform, maybe this is a good wake up call for you to consider jumping to a legit content distribution platform. You should not trust the operators of pirate IPTV platforms with your personal or payment details, and you are now running the risk of finding trouble and paying a lot more than what you've saved through piracy.