Two pirate IPTV services have become the latest victims in a growing line of services to be hacked by malicious actors. The platforms, which appear to be linked, have been ordered to pay a bitcoin ransom of around US$94,000. There is also a live threat to email customer data and banking information to the police and anti-piracy groups.
During the past two days, a pair of UK-based IPTV suppliers – SapphireSecure.net and KS-Hosting.com – became victims in what appears to be a series of hacks carried out by the same individual. Apparently connected by ownership, the platforms went down and began displaying similar messages on their homepages indicating that they had been seriously compromised.
The messages that appeared on both sites are similar and it seems from the timing that SapphireSecure was taken down first, displaying a “Down for Maintenance” error and the following text.
“Your IPTV provider from [redacted] in the United Kingdom has not secured your details and put you at huge risk. All the databases will be shared with the police and copyright protection agencies and posted online shortly.
[Name redacted] has the option to still protect his customers and himself and stop this and there are two ways of him doing this, this is his choice and likely depends on how much he cares about his customers data.”
The message on KS-Hosting goes a step further, again naming the individual allegedly behind both platforms while providing information relating to his current address, former address, and even his ISP. It also follows up with a threat to leak the personal information of staff members.