Pornhub hacker claims to have sold access to server for $1,000

A hacker going by the name of Revolver (aka 1x0123) claims to have hacked Pornhub and offered to sell access to the website's server for $1,000 on Twitter. The hacker posted two images on Twitter as proof of having accessed the Pornhub server and claimed that he made use of vulnerability within the user profile scrip to upload the shell access.

Pornhub has since investigated and denied the claims of the website's server being hacked. "The Pornhub team investigated the claim from the hacker named 1x0123. Our investigation proved that while those screenshot might look realistic to people without knowledge of the underlying infrastructure, the attack as described by the hacker is not technically possible. This incident was merely a hoax and no Pornhub systems were breached during those recent events," the adult entertainment site said.

However, the hacker confirmed to CSOnline on 15 May that he sold access to Pornhub servers to three people. The hacker also offered to share the details of the hack and even assist the website in patching the vulnerability that allowed him to gain access for $5,000. Pornhub said their security investigators worked with Revolver, but they refused to confirm whether they had paid Revolver for his assistance.

The alleged breach comes on the heels of Pornhub launching a bug bounty programme, which aims at instigating white hat hackers to identify and report vulnerabilities within the site and help fix them. The programme, which was invite-only when launched, is now public.

This is not the first time Revolver has been linked to reporting vulnerabilities. In April, he earned a public thank you from Edward Snowden, after having reported vulnerability in Piwik to the Freedom of the Press Foundation. He also reportedly uncovered an SQL injection vulnerability on one of the servers of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which has played a central role in the Panama Papers controversy.