CNET NEWS – Feb 11 – eHarmony is advising some of its customers to change their passwords after being informed of a security breach. eHarmony said it had repaired the vulnerability and was notifying customers who may have been affected. Although the site did not reveal how many customers were affected, it did say it was less than 0.05%t of its user base of 33M users since its inception. The hacker from Argentina also reportedly approached eHarmony with an offer to sell his security services to the site to fix the flaw–an offer the dating site said it declined. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS
It seems it was circulating between black hat hackers (the bad ones) a rumour about how to hack PlentyOfFish, eHarmony and other online dating sites.
Some white hat hackers (the good ones) received that information and decided to prove if that was true.
It takes nearly 4 seconds to download the info from a profile using SQL injections, 15 profiles per minute, and 900 per hour.
21,600 per day, and 1,388 days to download a 30 million profiles database (3.8 years)
It also seems several online dating sites, like PlentyOfFish and eHarmony HAD BEEN ALERTED IN ADVANCE, during 2009 about security holes, but they had not paid the attention it deserved.
See also from June 2009
http://eharmony-blog.com/1519
“eHarmony is in big trouble: Have spammers hacked eHarmony Advice?”
It seems it was circulating between black hat hackers (the bad ones) a rumour about how to hack PlentyOfFish, eHarmony and other online dating sites.
Some white hat hackers (the good ones) received that information and decided to prove if that was true.
It takes nearly 4 seconds to download the info from a profile using SQL injections, 15 profiles per minute, and 900 per hour.
21,600 per day, and 1,388 days to download a 30 million profiles database (3.8 years)
It also seems several online dating sites, like PlentyOfFish and eHarmony HAD BEEN ALERTED IN ADVANCE, during 2009 about security holes, but they had not paid the attention it deserved.
See also from June 2009
http://eharmony-blog.com/1519
“eHarmony is in big trouble: Have spammers hacked eHarmony Advice?”
PlentyofFish suffered similarly, recently. The hacker was very clever, apparently. But he went about his negotiations wrong, alas. Dating sites don’t negotiate with terrorists.
PlentyofFish suffered similarly, recently. The hacker was very clever, apparently. But he went about his negotiations wrong, alas. Dating sites don’t negotiate with terrorists.