It looks like the threat actor known as ShinyHunters was active again. It also looks like there was some drama about a sale of databases that was supposed to be exclusive but wasn’t, and databases and links to databases getting dumped.
What databases, you wonder? Well, BleepingComputer reports on the Animal Jam database, and there was also eatigo, Peatix, Redmart, Pluto.tv, Storybird, Homechef, and others. Did all the entities even know they were hacked? Possibly not, but I imagine that by now, reporters from other sites will have reached out to them for reactions.
As to the drama, well, it started with a user claiming that ShinyHunters and a data broker calling himself “ExpertData” screwed him on a sale that was supposed to be exclusive, but then they distributed what was supposed to be exclusive data after he paid tens of thousands of dollars.
For reasons that are not clear, instead of the alleged scammer(s) getting banned or required to refund monies, the buyer/complainant got banned from the forum.
So what did the banned forum member do? It appears they jumped on a popular Russian-language forum and started giving databases away for free there, including ones from Eatigo, Eskimi, Geniusu, Glofox, JoinPiggy, Peatix, Pluto, Nitrogo, and Redmart. Not too many people may have been able to grab them before they were deleted however. And 24 hours later… their account was deactivated.
We continue to live in strange times.