Hookers.nl Data Breach

What happened

In October 2019, the Dutch prostitution forum Hookers.nl suffered a data breach which exposed the personal information of sex workers and their customers. The IP and email addresses, usernames and either bcrypt or salted MD5 password hashes of 291k members were accessed via an unpatched vulnerability in the vBulletin forum software.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Change your Hookers.nl password immediately, and update it anywhere you reused the same password.
• Enable two-factor authentication on the affected account and on your critical services (email, banking).
• Watch for targeted phishing emails referencing Hookers.nl — attackers weaponise breach data quickly.
• Check whether your email address appears in this breach on haveibeenpwned.com.