Pierluigi Paganini May 16, 2016

A 19-year-old hacker who goes by the name Revolver claims to have breached into Pornhub server and already sold the access for $1,000.

It happened during the weekend, a researcher using the 1×0123 Twitter account announced the availability of a shell access to a subdomain on Pornhub and offered it for $1,000.

The figure is obviously ridiculous when you consider the high traffic that daily reach the server, more than 2.1 million visits per hour.

#pornhub command injection + shell on subdomain + src for sale
xmpp : [email protected] pic.twitter.com/rWjaUOkkhY

— 1×0123 (@1×0123) 14 maggio 2016

In order to prove the access to the Pornhub platform, 1×0123 posted on Twitter a couple of pictures. The researchers explained to have compromised the server by exploiting uploading a shell by exploiting a flaw in the mechanism used to upload the picture in the user profile.

Once the shell is uploaded on the server it is possible to have full control over the environment.

Salted Hash reached 1×0123 who confirmed that he had sold access to three people.

“2 guys with shell, 1 guy for a command injection script,” he told Salted Hash.

“Pornhub contacted Revolver for more information. He offered to share those details, and help patch the vulnerability that allowed such access, for total cost of $5,000 USD. It isn’t clear if the adult entertainment giant agreed to those terms.” states Salted Hash.

1×0123 hasn’t provided further information on the hack, he only stated the vulnerability affecting the user profile isn’t the ImageMagick flaw recently disclosed.

A Pornhub spokesperson confirmed the presence of the shell that appears to be on a non-production server and confirmed the company is currently investigating the issue.

1×0123 is a known in the security industry, he offered a similar access to the LA Times website in April after he exploited a vulnerability in the Advanced XML Reader WordPress plugin.

During the same period, he revealed to have found an SQL injection flaw on one of the servers of Mossack Fonseca (a custom online payment system called Orion House).

In March, he designed a website called VNC Roulette that displayed screenshots of random hackable computers.

On April 10, 2016, Edward Snowden publicly thanked 1×0123 for reporting a vulnerability in Piwik to the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

On May 9, Pornhub announced a bounty program through HackerOne with a maximum bounty set at $25K.

“The public launch of Pornhub’s Bug Bounty Program follows a private, invite-only beta program that the adult entertainment site ran last year, which compensated participants for helping to identify and fix about two dozen bugs. ” states the announcement.

Unfortunately for Pornhub, 1×0123 has a bad opinion of the bounty program has he confirmed in the following statement published on Twitter.

“i don’t report vulnerabilities anymore go underground or go away #FuckBugBounty” reads the Tweet.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Pornhub ,hacking)