I noticed that on the Plenty of Fish blog today that there was a post about how the website had been hacked by Chris Russo with member account details such as usernames and passwords stolen and how the hacker held the owners at ransom for a cash payout in order for the website to be restored.
This was an incredibly well planned and sophisticated attack. Chris Russo a hacker from Argentina who hacked Piratebay and signed up to plentyoffish several days before I had to go to a conference. The attacks started as I was on an airplane to attend the internet dating conference in Miami. It took Chris Russo 2 days to break in; he didn’t even try to hide behind a proxy, signed up under his real name and executed the attacks while logged in as himself. At midnight Miami time my wife gets a call from Chris Russo that plentyoffish has been hacked into and that Russians have taken over his computer and are trying to kill him, and his life is in extreme danger and they are currently downloading plentyoffish’s database. Chris is trying to create a sense of panic. I listened in the background and I closed the breach if indeed there was one while my wife was on the phone and then I immediately ordered an investigation. Over the next 24 hours we got a lot of voice mails from Chris Russo frantically wanting to talk to us.
I have personally had problems on my larger websites with hackers and i know how extremely stressful it can be but none of my projects are as successful as Plenty of Fish. With estimated website earnings in excess of $1,000,000 per month it would put anyone on edge when threatened by a hacker, especially if they want paying for things to be put right!
You can read the rest of the Plenty of Fish Hacked blog post here
Nick
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