JAKARTA - The ShinyHunters hacker group claims to have stolen data of Pornhub premium adult site customers and threatened to publish it if the ransom demands were not met. The statement was delivered directly to Reuters through an online conversation, Tuesday, December 16 local time.
Reuters has not been able to independently confirm the scale and scope of the data leak. However, ShinyHunters handed over a sample of data that was partially successfully verified. At least three former Pornhub customers, two men in Canada and one man in the United States, confirmed that the data shown did belong to them, even though it was several years old. They spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
"We demand a ransom payment in the form of Bitcoin so that Pornhub data is not published and deleted," ShinyHunters said, quoted by VOI from Reuters.
Pornhub and its corporate owner, Ottawa-based Ethical Capital Partners, have not responded to requests for comment. News of the alleged hack was previously reported by cybersecurity news site Bleeping Computer.
Pornhub is one of the largest adult content sites in the world, with claims of more than 100 million daily visits and around 36 billion visits per year. Pornhub's premium service offers access to high-resolution video, ad-free, and virtual reality content.
ShinyHunters said the data they held came from 14 users of premium services. Reuters claimed to be able to match the details of six people in the data with information that had previously leaked in another incident and was documented by dark web intelligence company District 4 Labs. Three of them confirmed that they had ever subscribed to Pornhub Premium.
It is not known how ShinyHunters obtained the data. The hacker group declined to explain the technical details of the leak.
In a statement dated December 12, Pornhub revealed a recent cyber security incident involving third-party analytics provider Mixpanel, which affected an undisclosed number of Pornhub Premium users. The incident is said to have occurred in the Mixpanel environment and only includes "a limited number of analytics events for some users".
Mixpanel itself announced a cyber security incident on November 27. However, the company confirmed to Reuters that they did not find any indication that the data came from the November 2025 incident.
According to Mixpanel, Pornhub data was last accessed by a valid employee account at Pornhub's parent company in 2023. "If the data is now in the hands of unauthorized parties, we do not believe it is due to a security incident at Mixpanel," the company said in an official statement.
ShinyHunters still claims that the data is related to the Mixpanel incident. This claim was denied by Mixpanel, which said it had conducted a thorough investigation with independent cybersecurity experts and informed all affected clients. "We believe that Pornhub is not among these clients and that this data is not related to the November incident," said a Mixpanel spokesperson via email.
ShinyHunters is known as an established hacker group that in recent months has been linked to a series of major hacks and extortion attempts, including against Salesforce customer data as well as a number of luxury retailers in the UK. This Pornhub case again highlights the emerging reputational and legal risks when sensitive user data falls into the hands of irresponsible parties.
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