Hackers group steals database of information million Cnet users

The American news site Cnet has fallen victim to a Russian hacker group. The hackers managed to steal the database with user information but say they have no malicious intent. They mainly want to generate attention for the security of websites.

Through a security hole in the implementation of the Symfony framework, the hackers managed to get into Cnet’s servers this weekend, the news site reports. The group then copied the user information database. A spokesperson, with pseudonym w0rm, Cnet informed about the leak via a Twitter message. In total, this concerns information from more than a million users. Cnet has since patched the leak.

The hackers say they have no malicious intentions and want to increase the security of the internet by announcing the hack. Cnet would have been chosen as a target because it is a large well-known website. The information in the database was encrypted and w0rm says the group has no intention of decrypting the information.

W0rm would have offered to sell the database for one bitcoin, according to the hacker this was only done to generate more attention for the hack. The hackers previously claim to have hacked the websites of the BBC, Adobe and the Bank of America to draw attention to the security of websites.