A social media platform used to match advertisers with thousands of influencers has been hacked.<\/p>\n
Social Bluebook, a Los Angeles-based company, allows advertisers to pay social media \u201cinfluencers\u201d for posts that promote their products and services. The company claims it has some 300,000 influencers on its books.<\/p>\n
But in October 2019, the company\u2019s entire backend database was stolen in a data breach.<\/p>\n
TechCrunch <\/a> obtained the database, which contains some 217,000 user accounts \u2014 including influencer names, email addresses, and passwords hashed, which had been scrambled using the strong SHA-2 hashing algorithm.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not known how the database was exfiltrated from the company\u2019s systems or who was behind the breach.<\/p>\n We contacted several users who when presented with their information confirmed it as accurate. We also provided a portion of the data to Social Bluebook co-founder Sam Michie for verification.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have just now become aware of this data breach that occurred in October 2019,\u201d he told TechCrunch in an email Thursday.<\/p>\n He said affected users will be informed of the breach by email. The company also informed the California attorney general\u2019s office of the breach, per state law.<\/p>\n Social media influencers are a constant target for hackers, who often try to hijack accounts with popular handles or high follower counts. Some influencers have relied on white-hat hackers to get their hijacked accounts back<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last year, an Indian social media firm left a database<\/a> of Instagram influencers online, which included phone numbers and email addresses scraped from their profiles.<\/p>\n
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