If you use movie streaming service Plex and have posted on its forums before, or maybe you’re just really active on its forums, you might want to change your passwords. The service has recently confirmed that its forums have been hacked and it seems that the hacker(s) is demanding ransom.According to Plex, “At approximately 1pm PDT yesterday (July 1st) we learned that the server which hosts our forums and blog was compromised. The attacker was able to gain access to some personal information, such as IP addresses, forum private messages, email addresses, and encrypted (hashed and salted) passwords for our forum users.”
As a precaution, Plex has since reset the passwords of its forum users and have also sent out emails to those affected, so if you might want to check your email for the details if you are a Plex forum user. In the meantime the hackers have threatened Plex and stated that they will release the information that was stolen if they do not pay the ransom.
In a post on Reddit by the hacker, “I gave them until the 3rd of this month to send 9.5 BTC, or I would release all this data. This ransom is still active and on the 3rd: if no BTC payment is made, the ransom wll go up by 5 BTC. Eventually if no BTC payment is made, the data will be released via multiple torrent networks and there will be no more plex.tv.”
The hacker has also mentioned that he is open to receiving payments privately from forum members should they wish to have their data excluded from the list.