LulzSec Reborn Claims Military Dating Site Hack

Anonymous: 10 Facts About The Hacktivist Group

Picking up the mantle where LulzSec left off, a new group calling itself LulzSec Reborn this week announced that it had hacked a military dating website and released usernames and passwords for 170,937 subscribers.

LulzSec Reborn announced the hack Sunday via Pastebin post: "The website http://www.militarysingles.com/ was recently closed day ago or so, so we dumped email db. There are emails such as @us.army.mil; @carney.navy.mil; @greatlakes.cnet.navy.mil; @microsoft.com; etc." The group also released a 13-MB file, compressed using RAR, that contained stolen user data.

Meanwhile, a Tuesday tweet from Operation Digiturk (Anonymous News Turkey)--which had initially publicized the breach--promised, "You will see the full database of military singles which includes priv messages etc soon :)."

MilitarySingles bills itself as "an online dating service created to provide soldiers a means to find a match with someone who is interested in the military lifestyle," as well as "a great way for any civilian to find the soldier of their dreams." But according to DataBreaches.net, instead of members' images displaying on the website Monday, there was instead this text: "Error: Slideshow data cannot load due to security issue." By Tuesday, however, the site's images appeared to once again be working.

[ It's no longer a matter of if or when you get hacked. See Security's New Reality: Assume The Worst. ]

In a comment posted to DataBreaches.net Sunday, the administrator for ESingles--the company that runs MilitarySingles--disputed that the site had been hacked. "We at ESingles Inc. are aware of the claim that someone has hacked MilitarySingles.com and are currently investigating the situation. At this time there is no actual evidence that MilitarySingles.com was hacked and it is possible that the Tweet from Operation Digiturk is simply a false claim. We do however take the security and privacy of our members very seriously and will therefore treat this claim as if it were real and proceed with the required security steps in order to ensure the website and its database is secure."

But in response to that comment, a post from DataBreaches.net read, "I compared the database in the .rar file to the 'online members' pictured on your home page and the entries in the data dump correspond to those usernames."

Likewise, LulzSec Reborn tweeted Monday: "Stupid Administrator 'There is no evidence militarysingles is hacked' Well guess what?" and linked to a page on the MilitarySingles.com website which read: "lulz is sb."

Accordingly, any users of the dating site should expect to see their username and password choices leaked online. "If you know anyone who has ever used the Military Singles website, it would be a good idea to tell them to change their password as a precaution--and to ensure that they are not using the same password anywhere else," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, in a blog post.

The dating website hack was the first data release associated with LulzSec Reborn, which announced its return, or at least reboot, last week via YouTube. "You haven't stopped us, you have merely disrupted the active faction," said the video, which didn't yet sport the "LulzSec Reborn" name. While that communication had promised that April 1, 2012, would be the group's official launch date, a Monday tweet from the LulzSec Reborn account claimed, "we don't know who is planning that..."

Did whoever's behind LulzSec Reborn have anything to do with LulzSec, or is the nomenclature just a hacktivist branding exercise? "Of course, on the Internet, anyone can claim to be whatever they want," said Cluley. In addition, the FBI announced earlier this month that it had arrested the leaders of LulzSec, as well as some of the key members of Anonymous.

Regardless of who's involved, LulzSec Reborn appears to be gearing up for more "data dumps." Tuesday, the group also announced via Pastebin the release of a 500-k zip file, distributed via cyberlocker file-sharing services, containing what appear to be files from the CSS Corp website. Early Tuesday morning, the website for the company, which offers information and communication technology services, appeared to be offline. The leaked file includes website surveys, contact information for CSS media relations personnel, as well as a "users" file containing what appear to be usernames, email addresses, and passwords for nine CSS employees.

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