Hack Exposes Pirate Bay User Data

tsu doh nimh writes "A group of hackers from Argentina recently broke into the database for thepiratebay.org, the Internet's largest torrent search engine, exposing user names, Internet addresses, and (MD5) hashed password data on more than 4 million users, according to Brian Krebs. He interviewed the leader of the group, Ch Russo, who said they briefly considered what the information would be worth to the RIAA and MPAA before going public with the breach. From the story: 'Probably these groups would be very interested in this information, but we are not [trying] to sell it,' Russo said. 'Instead we wanted to tell people that their information may not be so well protected.'"

Comments

worth to the RIAA and MPAA?

[nurb432]

Nothing at all.

1 - If they accept stolen information anything they do with it will be tossed out of court and taint any pending or future litigation.
2 - Having an account isn't grounds for anything.. I doubt even logs of what you searched for would be.

Re:And this...

[idontgno]

You only need an account for uploading, posting comments, and viewing/downloading porn torrents.

Well, there's your problem!

Or, more specifically, there's why the hack yielded 4 million users when a great deal of the torrents are available without registration.