• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About Darknet
  • Hacking Tools
  • Popular Posts
  • Darknet Archives
  • Contact Darknet
    • Advertise
    • Submit a Tool
Darknet – Hacking Tools, Hacker News & Cyber Security

Darknet - Hacking Tools, Hacker News & Cyber Security

Darknet is your best source for the latest hacking tools, hacker news, cyber security best practices, ethical hacking & pen-testing.

VTech Hack – Over 7 Million Records Leaked (Children & Parents)

December 4, 2015

Views: 2,588

And once again, the messy technical flaws of a company are being exposed with the recent VTech hack – it’s really not looking good for them with account passwords ‘secured’ with unsalted md5 hashes and all kinds of private information being leaked includes parents addresses, kids birthdays, genders, secret answers and associated meta-data (IP addresses, download histories and more).

VTech Hacked - Over 7 Million Records Leaked

The attack originally claimed to have leaked only around 220,000 records – but it turns out to be way worse than that. 4.8 million parents and 6.37 million children – including 1.2 million users of its KidConnect messaging service.

Names, home and email addresses, security questions and answers, and more information on millions of families worldwide have been swiped from a top toymaker’s database.

And the birthdays, names, and genders of nearly a quarter of a million kiddies have been accessed, too.

Chinese electronics giant VTech today admitted its systems were compromised on November 14. Miscreants were able to extract customer records from its Learning Lodge app store, which provides downloads of games, books, music and other stuff for VTech toys. The Hong Kong-based biz specializes in making computer-like gizmos for preschool kids to play with, settling them in for a lifetime of fondleslab smearing and internet addiction.

Computer security bloke Troy Hunt says he has seen a copy of the swiped information, and reckons he found “4.8 million unique customer email addresses,” suggesting that many accounts have been raided by hackers.

He also said people’s account passwords were one-way encrypted using MD5, a particularly weak hashing algorithm, meaning simple passwords can be easily cracked and revealed. No salting was used, so off-the-shelf rainbow tables can be used to divulge rudimentary passwords like “children15” or “welcome81”.

So yah pretty serious stuff, with the compromises of KidConnect and Learning Lodge holding some fairly sensitive information on both parents and children. Even though chats, images and audio are encrypted, it turns out they aren’t encrypted very well using a fairly weak algorithm AND weak keys. For example in the md5 hash for the filename they use a hash of the KidConnect username, in uppercase, and a constant value – ‘vtech’ or ‘vtechvtech’.

And the data itself is encrypted with the current time + a PRNG = not a very securely encrypted file.

Toymaker VTech has admitted that millions of kiddies’ online profiles were left exposed to hackers – much higher than the 220,000 first feared.

On Tuesday, the Hong Kong biz confessed in an updated FAQ page that it did not properly secure personal information on 4.8 million parents and 6.37 million children – including 1.2 million users of its KidConnect messaging service.

That admission comes four days after it emerged that a hacker had raided the entertainment company’s customer database.

After families buy VTech’s computer-like toys, which are aimed at preschool tykes, they are encouraged to sign up for online accounts to download apps, music, books and more to the gizmos.

That requires handing over sensitive information, such as parents’ names, email addresses and home addresses, and the birthdays, names, and genders of youngsters. All this data – plus MD5-hashed passwords, secret answers to personal questions for password resets, IP addresses, and download histories – was snatched by an intruder who bypassed VTech’s poor online security.

“Regretfully our database was not as secure as it should have been,” VTech’s FAQ admitted.

So yah, quite a mess for them. They are vehemently claiming no credit card details or social security numbers were leaked – because well that stuff makes you liable.

But everything else was leaked, and honestly – along with it one of the worst crypto implementations I’ve ever seen. If you really want to have a laugh, check it out here:

At the weekend I reversed the vtech kidconnect app and found this. Not surprised at the latest developments at all. pic.twitter.com/ghrlTPZHNo

— slipstream/RoL (@TheWack0lian) November 30, 2015

Seriously.

Source: The Register

Share84
Tweet
Share26
Buffer
WhatsApp
Email
110 Shares

Filed Under: Database Hacking, Exploits/Vulnerabilities, Privacy



Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    December 4, 2015 at 1:54 am

    The data hasn’t been leaked.

Primary Sidebar

Search Darknet

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Advertise on Darknet

Latest Posts

AgentSmith HIDS - Host Based Intrusion Detection

AgentSmith HIDS – Host Based Intrusion Detection

padre - Padding Oracle Attack Tool

padre – Padding Oracle Attack Exploiter Tool

Privacy Implications of Web 3.0 and Darknets

Privacy Implications of Web 3.0 and Darknets

DataSurgeon - Extract Sensitive Information (PII) From Logs

DataSurgeon – Extract Sensitive Information (PII) From Logs

Pwnagotchi - Maximize Crackable WPA Material For Bettercap

Pwnagotchi – Maximize Crackable WPA Key Material For Bettercap

HardCIDR - Network CIDR and Range Discovery Tool

HardCIDR – Network CIDR and Range Discovery Tool

Topics

  • Advertorial (28)
  • Apple (46)
  • Countermeasures (225)
  • Cryptography (82)
  • Database Hacking (89)
  • Events/Cons (7)
  • Exploits/Vulnerabilities (430)
  • Forensics (64)
  • Hacker Culture (8)
  • Hacking News (228)
  • Hacking Tools (681)
  • Hardware Hacking (82)
  • Legal Issues (179)
  • Linux Hacking (72)
  • Malware (238)
  • Networking Hacking Tools (352)
  • Password Cracking Tools (104)
  • Phishing (41)
  • Privacy (218)
  • Secure Coding (118)
  • Security Software (233)
  • Site News (51)
    • Authors (6)
  • Social Engineering (37)
  • Spammers & Scammers (76)
  • Stupid E-mails (6)
  • Telecomms Hacking (6)
  • UNIX Hacking (6)
  • Virology (6)
  • Web Hacking (384)
  • Windows Hacking (169)
  • Wireless Hacking (45)

Security Blogs

  • Dancho Danchev
  • F-Secure Weblog
  • Google Online Security
  • Graham Cluley
  • Internet Storm Center
  • Krebs on Security
  • Schneier on Security
  • TaoSecurity
  • Troy Hunt

Security Links

  • Exploits Database
  • Linux Security
  • Register – Security
  • SANS
  • Sec Lists
  • US CERT

Footer

Most Viewed Posts

  • Brutus Password Cracker – Download brutus-aet2.zip AET2 (2,181,793)
  • Darknet – Hacking Tools, Hacker News & Cyber Security (2,172,351)
  • Top 15 Security Utilities & Download Hacking Tools (2,095,354)
  • 10 Best Security Live CD Distros (Pen-Test, Forensics & Recovery) (1,198,680)
  • Password List Download Best Word List – Most Common Passwords (931,834)
  • wwwhack 1.9 – wwwhack19.zip Web Hacking Software Free Download (774,464)
  • Hack Tools/Exploits (672,589)
  • Wep0ff – Wireless WEP Key Cracker Tool (528,854)

Search

Recent Posts

  • AgentSmith HIDS – Host Based Intrusion Detection August 31, 2023
  • padre – Padding Oracle Attack Exploiter Tool May 28, 2023
  • Privacy Implications of Web 3.0 and Darknets March 31, 2023
  • DataSurgeon – Extract Sensitive Information (PII) From Logs March 21, 2023
  • Pwnagotchi – Maximize Crackable WPA Key Material For Bettercap February 12, 2023
  • HardCIDR – Network CIDR and Range Discovery Tool December 29, 2022

Tags

apple botnets computer-security darknet Database Hacking ddos dos exploits fuzzing google hacking-networks hacking-websites hacking-windows hacking tool Information-Security information gathering Legal Issues malware microsoft network-security Network Hacking Password Cracking pen-testing penetration-testing Phishing Privacy Python scammers Security Security Software spam spammers sql-injection trojan trojans virus viruses vulnerabilities web-application-security web-security windows windows-security Windows Hacking worms XSS

Copyright © 1999–2023 Darknet All Rights Reserved · Privacy Policy