A hacker has indicated that he will be accepting $14,500 worth of Bitcoin for data hacked from eight websites including Coinmama, a crypto platform that facilitates buying of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

The hacker has already listed the data for sale on an online dark market site. Apart from the crypto platform, other affected sites include: lxigo, a travel booking site; YouNow, a video streaming site; Houzz, an interior design site; Ge.tt, a file sharing service; Roll20, a gaming site; Stronghold Kingdoms, a multiplayer online game and PetFlow, a pet care service.

In total, 127 million records have been stolen from these websites. The hacker has quoted $14,500 in Bitcoin for data from all the websites.

When listing the data for sale on the online dark marketplace, the hacker notes that some of the websites were running an outdated version of a password hashing algorithm, MD5. The hacker is thought to have capitalized on the flaw found in the old hashing algorithm to infiltrate other websites.

According to IntSights, an Israeli security company:

[The hacker] used some kind of vulnerability that surfaced around that time and wasn’t patched by these companies or totally new unknown vulnerability. As most of these sites were not known breaches, it seems we’re dealing here with a hacker that did the hacks by himself and not just someone who obtained it from somewhere else and now just resold it.

Data from ZDNet, a news outlet, indicates that the hacker infiltrated the websites on different years and dates spanning from August 2017 to January 2019. The security breach on Coinmama occurred on August 2, 2017.

In all the breached websites, the data stolen included full names, profile IDs, social media emails & IDs, passwords, gaming data, passport numbers among other personal details.

Why do you think the hacker specifically wants Bitcoin for data hacked from the websites instead of a privacy cryptocurrency like Monero?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.