LA Daily News: Porn industry frets over security breach
 

Porn industry frets over security breach
By Lisa Friedman, Washington Bureau
Article Last Updated: 12/27/2007 12:05:13 AM PST

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For more coverage of the adult film industry, see our 2007 special report, Exposed: Porn in the Valley

WASHINGTON - A New Jersey company that helps run thousands of pornography Web sites acknowledged a major security breach Wednesday, sparking widespread concern in the adult-entertainment industry that consumers' personal data could be endangered.

According to industry chat boards that have been buzzing about the problem, the violation so far appears to be limited to e-mail addresses, with an avalanche of spam e-mail hitting Web site customers' inboxes - including unique addresses created for joining specific porn sites.

John Albright, owner of the Too Much Media Corp., said in a statement Wednesday that no credit-card information was affected by the October incident.

Officials with both Visa and MasterCard said they were unaware Wednesday of any problems in connection with the company.

"An investigation is under way as to the cause and level of the security breach," Albright said in the statement. "TMM intends to prosecute to the fullest extent possible anyone responsible for any breach of its servers and programs."

But many in the adult industry - based heavily in the San Fernando Valley - said the breach could unravel hard-fought attempts to change the longtime perception that the industry is shady.

"The adult industry has worked for a long time to become an industry that can be trusted with personal information," said Kathee Brewer, former editor of AVN Online, the trade journal of the digital adult-entertainment industry.

When customer information is leaked - even if it is only e-mail addresses - Brewer said, "consumers begin to back away because they don't trust the industry anymore. All it takes is one issue like this."

Phone calls and e-mails to Albright to discuss details of the breach were not returned this week.

It remains unclear how much information may have been accessed and how the incident began.

But industry insiders and companies that use Too Much Media Corp. software said they have been aware since October that some customer lists belonging to porn-site networks had been stolen. They estimated that the number of victims could be in the hundreds of thousands.

"You can imagine the backlash," said Ilan Michan, owner of Woodland Hills-based OC-3 Networks, a Web-hosting company that Michan said handles about 40percent of all adult-entertainment Web sites and first discovered the problem in October.

Michan said employees during a monthly security check noticed that the same IP address was repeatedly trying to access his software.

Michan said the company determined that someone had accessed the user name and password assigned to the Too Much Media software.

That program - known as NATS for Next-Generation Administration and Tracking Software - is primarily used by Internet porn-site networks to track activity on the hundreds of thousands of advertisers that send traffic to their Web pages.

Advertisers, known as affiliates, also use the software to check their own sales and traffic. About 500 affiliate networks - approximately one-third of the industry - use the software.

In his statement Wednesday, Albright did not address what steps the company took to inform people of the breach and possible loss of personal information, as it is required to do under New Jersey law.

"It's a big deal for them. A lot of people went with this software because it's supposed to be safe and secure. It makes the industry look bad," said Christian Amico, director of operations with Atlas Multimedia Inc., a San Fernando Valley firm that builds adult-entertainment Web sites.

While there have been no reports of identity theft, many said the fact that names, e-mail addresses and the types of fetishes people enjoy might be floating around the Internet is worrisome.

"Consumer confidence is shot because of this," said Jason Tucker, president of San Fernando Valley-based Falcon Foto, which he described as the "world's largest erotic library."

"The industry has worked so hard in the last five years alone to make people understand that this is a real business and we operate like a real business," Tucker said.

"When something like this happens, consumer confidence in the adult business drops and we're all going to suffer because of it."

[email protected] 202-662-8731

If anyone wants a copy of this list I have it for sale.

I was shocked to see what fetishes my Father was into.

What is your kid or father into? Shall we see?

This is AWESOME!

We can all say thank you to John for this. I'm sorry but he knew of it in October and did not fix it. It might be that others told him of the problem earlier and he denied or ignored it.

So before you shoot the message bearer remember, it's not his fault this thing exploded. Unless you think the solution to a problem is to hide or deny it exists.

John your silence is deafening.

Not good for sales, nope!

http://www.dailynews.com/search/ci_7....dailynews.com

Lets use this list and expose some Presidental Runners..

I bet Mit Romney Likes Bukkake.

Serious business.

Holy shit!

fucking-around-and-business-discussion/773087-traffichangar-google-cache-epass-account-draining-starts.html

Im telling you. We can use this leak for good use. Lets expose some people.
Judges, people in Politics, you name it.

I want to see what kind of porn they buy. And so does the public!

No one cares what the avarage joe buys. This will be huge when and if some well known public figure's names leak out!

Great...

DAMN!!!

Note to self: Never fuck or threaten to sue anybody.

Next time anyone runs for office you should seriously consider MinusOneBit to run your campaign.

2c

You notice how it mentioned John is not answering his phone? Good job, John. Never tell a reporter no comment. Not returning the phone calls is the same thing.

This is no time for jokes.. some asshat monitoring this forum will think you're serious & blow it out of context. This industry is facing enough challenges already as it is.

Well maybe this is God's way of punishing those who buy Porn.
Ever think of that?

and who made up this number?
I would like to see the stats to support that 500 affiliate networks is about 1/3 of the adult website industry.

you have to love the "stats" that fly around about this business<G>

on a personal note, I am not one of those 1/3, it would be a cold day in hell when I rented software, especially software that someone else can do as they want with - without any input from me. Its ALWAYS better to own then to rent, this goes for homes and well as software.

I spoke with lisa at the dailey news for over an hour today, i explained to her how the industry workred and I'm sure she will have a follow up article on this vey soon.

I was shocked to get a call from her today about this, but being one of the first two to find out about the problem I was happy to tell her my findings.

MinusOneBit = Carl Rove incognito ?

Someone should let me talk to her.
Ill set her straight and make the Industry proud.

Maybe even get some exposure for my Bukkake party in Vegas.

You are having a good season. Great game against the Knicks tonight.

The article says that OC-3 hosts 40&#37; of all adult sites.

This is bullshit.

lol damn

I think its more like 60% isnt it?

Talking to Mainstream news companies is definatly a bad and dangerous thing.

It really hurts everyone's bottom line.

I set up a google alert for Too Much Media Corp 20 minutes ago and already got three alerts in 20 minutes !

This is gonna spread like gonorrhea at a Boy alley house party :)

Put me to sleep.

Don't worry, all the "Bros" using his software are going to be jumping in and telling us what a great guy he is, how it will blow over and keep sending traffic. :1orglaugh

You silly old fart. You love attention as much as minusonebit does. If NATS wasn't good software you wouldn't have hundreds of programs using it. Why would any program jump in and defend john if they were paying him money while all their member details were being compromised? Moron.

So far we have VERY little evidence of anything serious from this security breach. No credit cards. No passwords. No 'hundreds of thousands of accounts comprimised'. Some spam emails and thats it. No matter who you do business with in the industry the one thing no one in the biz wants is complete hysteria so no one feels safe joining a paysite.

Are you really this stupid?

Front page news in LA :(

http://www.dailynews.com

Once again you prove to be a total retard. Every industry has their spokes person or group to handle situations like that.

Data get leaked from big compagnies daily, and it dosen't show in the news.

All it took was one retard to send out press releases to every media out there to blow up the problem to huge proportions.

One can tell John tried to handle this quietly and with good reason.

It is a damn shame newer folks to the biz do not think things through one bit...

Does anyone read the Daily News?

I did not even know "ownes" was a word, but no I don't and what does that matter?

owned by Newscorp out of DC

It is now. Jesus has spoken. :helpme

No, this is bullshit: Los Angeles Daily News Swipes ICWT?s Story (More or Less)

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Aint that the same blog you posted that link to those webmaster passowrds on? :thumbsup

No one said NATS was not good software so WRONG at the start. It's the people behind it who are to blame.

Why would a sponsor using it want to jump in to defend NATS and John? To keep the traffic flowing. Now who is asking stupid questions.

You have VERY little evidence it was only emails stolen. So WRONG again.

Doctor Dre yes all it took is one retard to let the news out. Much better was the way John handled it. Others might think he should of handled it properly 3 months ago and not deny or hide it. So a retard could show how stupid it was to cover it up.

Seems the "Lets keep the rotten apples hidden" brigade are awake. The problem is of Johns making as I said don't blame the message bearer. blame the person who created the real problem.

But if you're relying on NATS for something it might be better to call me a moron, retard or what ever for pointing out who put us in the shit.

I don't understand the positive side of making the daily news about the industry leaking data.

Please enlighten me.

Investigation should be done internally, as a lot of people are doing right now silently.

I think that is kinda Baseless Paul.

NATS is a good software in a pretty competitive market.
Nats is not the only choice but what they have is very functional.

The NATS/MPA comparison will always be somthing the typical webmaster dwells on and a smart webmaster will chose one of these solutions.

There are many reasons for this kind of software and NATS is not the only software that recieves maintenance and updates and patches and yeah fixes that require administrative level attention.

Microsoft comes to mind when it comes to those sort of things.

If you work on the web then you know Scripts are exploited by something not thought of. These sort of scripts save alot of money for people looking for a fast answer and the fact is they will always be utilised and the bigger they get more people break into them or attempt to break into them.

Banks and Credit Card companies are hacked as well, not so long ago there was a huge breech at a Credit COmpany and bank.
Tons of info was stolen TONS.

I think many of you are comming down to heavy on NATS and overblowing what occured frankly.

So does this mean you're going to try to sue them too?

Anyone who works in this business and does not know there are lots of people who would spread this story around and make the most from it is not thinking a lot. Anyone who does not know that security breaches on software and servers is not a daily occurrence is also also not thinking.

So if when you're informed of a security breach in your software you have to take it very seriously. when told about it again and again you have to investigate it thoroughly.

When you find it and don't fix it 101% you are too blame if it goes wrong.

NATS is good software. It's the person behind it who is to blame for the shit hitting the fan. Blaming the message bearer for bad news is diverting attention.

John Albright was told about this problem. HE DID NOT FIX IT. Worse he tried to hide it.

Now either HE"S not that clever or he had a reason.

Doctor Dre with you 100% on this. If it had been investigated properly in the beginning we would not be in this position now. I'm assuming you mean an investigation and not hide or deny it.

This will defintly get alot more people to buy porn now they have to be afraid of their personal info getting leaked.. the person feeding this journalist is costing us millions

50 security breaches

Minusonebit, why not go after the person(s) who did the spamming rather than continue to bash nats? I understand you want to hold them accountable, but don't you think the actual spammers should be tracked down as well?
WG

The boy has an agenda... He could care less about helping to fix the problem.. He just wants to escalate it..