Hacked:CNET Hacked By Russian Hacker Group

Hacked:

CNET Hacked By Russian Hacker Group

Recently CNET has been Hacked by a Russian Hacker Group. They stole usernames, passwords and emails of more than one million users. CNET said a representative from the group – which calls itself ‘w0rm’ – informed it about the hack via a Twitter conversation and offered to sell the database for 1 Bitcoin, or $622.

But it added that the hacking group said the plan to sell the database was to gain attention and “nothing more”.

The representative of the group claimed that it hacked CNET servers to improve the overall security on the internet. The group has claimed to have successfully hacked the BBC last year, as well as websites of Adobe and Bank of America. It says that by targeting high-profile websites it can raise awareness of security issues.

“[W]e are driven to make the Internet a better and safer [place] rather than a desire to protect copyright,” the representative said in a Twitter exchange with CNET.

On Monday, the representative offered a security solution to CNET by tweeting: “#CNET I have good protection system for u, ping me”.

According to CNET, 27.1 million unique users visited its desktop and mobile sites in the US in June this year.

Robert Hansen, a Web security expert at White Hat Security, said CNET readers might not be at risk.

“It definitely can feel like a slap in the face to an organization to be hacked, but in reality, most of the time in circumstances like this it’s actually a good thing,” Hansen said. “W0rm was careful not to give the full path to the actual exploit, and informed the general public that the compromise occurred.”