Summary: Over 3,000 users of a bestiality website had their personal data exposed online.
After a cyber attack on a bestiality website, thousands of users are finding their personal information exposed, according to Motherboard.
Motherboard did not want to name the bestiality website, but it is the home to pornographic images of humans having sexual relationships with animals. According to Motherboard, 45 states outlaw the act of bestiality but watching the images is often not a criminal offense.
The bestiality website was hacked and almost 3,000 users’ personal information is circulating on public boards, and these details include IP addresses, email addresses, names, messages, and other data.
According to Motherboard, “The news shows how websites that deal with the most controversial subjects can be hacked and expose their users, and perhaps their real-world identities, in the process.”
Security researcher Troy Hunt told Motherboard that this incident should be a wake-up call to people that whatever they browse online can be leaked to the public. Hunt was the first to expose the hack.
“There are thousands of real email addresses in this incident and deniability will be hard when they sit alongside IP addresses. It could be both enormously embarrassing and enormously damaging for some people,” Hunt said.
Visiting a bestiality website may or may not be a crime, depending on a users’ state of residence, but creating the content is often illegal. For instance, earlier this month, a Texas police officer was caught in a bestiality video on a website, and he was subsequently arrested for creating obscene content. According to the Star-Telegram, police investigated the officer, Andrew Craig Sustaita, 31, and discovered that he also had hundreds of images of child pornography on his computer. The case then was forwarded to federal law enforcement.
In Ohio, bestiality was not made illegal until 2017. Cleveland.com reported that the first man arrested under the new law was Scott Turner, 48. He was convicted in March of having sexual contact with an animal, a misdemeanor which carries a sentence of up to 90 days in jail.
Motherboard stated that it had independently verified the realness of the bestiality website’s breached data.
“Motherboard downloaded the dataset from a public forum discussing the breach, and verified many of the email addresses contained in the dump are connected to active accounts on the site. For dozens of tested addresses, when trying to create an account with one of the emails, the site returns an error message: ‘Email is already used by another user!'” Motherboard said.
The website and its users did not respond to Motherboard’s request for comment.
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