NATS breach hits MSNBC and the Big Time

[Bill]

before today, all the mainstream news about the NATS breach wa sin relatively smaller newspapers.

Now it's on MSNBC. However, the news seems to accurately focus on the stolen email addresses.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22613868/

---
"MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. - When operators of sex-oriented Web sites gather at the Internext convention starting Sunday in Las Vegas, a major leak at a little New Jersey company is likely to be a big topic.

Freehold-based Too Much Media, which sells accounting software for adult Web sites, told its customers last month that a security breach on its computers allowed hackers to access various adult Web sites’ subscriber lists.

Keith Kimmel of Norman, Okla., who runs two Web sites that feature porn, said the breach has the potential to embarrass.

“Would you really want a record floating around the Internet that you subscribe to hardcore bondage?” he asked.

Indeed, it appears stolen personal and company information is being used to bombard subscribers, many of whom would rather not have their identities known, with junk e-mails advertising sexually explicit images from competitors. No credit information appears to have been stolen.

Company co-founder John Albright said someone stole addresses and passwords from Too Much Media’s computers that allowed them to log onto its customers’ porn Web sites as the webmasters and extract information about porn subscribers and the Web sites that refer them.

Too Much Media’s Next-Generation Administration and Tracking Software, known as NATS, tracks referrals to porn Web sites from other sites and calculates how much the affiliate sites are owed. The porn purveyors typically pay the affiliates a portion of their subscription revenue.

Using the e-mail addresses and passwords, the hackers — seeking customers for still other porn enterprises — sent around new waves of pornographic spam, Albright said."

story continues at the link

---