A hacker known as Peace is offering up a database for sale on the dark web that contains information on 57 million people, but there's a big mystery concerning where it's from.
The data set was reportedly hacked last year by a Russian group and later obtained by Peace, who posted it for sale on a forum for a little less than 1 Bitcoin, or roughly $400. Peace told ZDNet the heist came from Zoosk, a popular dating site with 33 million members.
Except Zoosk flat-out denies being hacked. "None of the full user records in the sample data set was a direct match to a Zoosk user," a spokesperson told ZDNet in a statement.
Tech Insider reached out to ask whether Zoosk was sure it had not been breached or whether it was still investigating. The company did not immediately respond.
ZDNet and security researcher Troy Hunt — who runs a website to notify people whether they were part of a data breach — attempted to analyze the data and reach out to some of the users. Some said their Zoosk signup data and email seemed about right, while others denied being on the site at all.
Then some mentioned not using Zoosk, but Badoo, another dating site based in the U.K.
And guess what? Badoo says it wasn't hacked either. It is possible that one or the other was hacked and the companies are initially denying a breach as they investigate, as others have done in the past.
While it's not entirely clear where the accounts are from, it is clear that most are genuine: Hunt found that more than 52 million records were unique, and not previously disclosed. TI asked over Twitter whether Hunt would post the find to his website:
—Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) May 6, 2016
This post was updated on 5/6 10:17 a.m. PDT with the reply from Troy Hunt over Twitter.
