The confidential, personal information of 3.5-million members of the poker website Ultimate Bet (UB) was made public after the dormant site suffered a data breach this past weekend (Dec. 2-4).
The leaked data, including names, screen names, email and home addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and IP addresses, was posted anonymously on the poker forums of strategy site Two Plus Two, but removed after eight minutes, Subject: Poker reported.
Despite its short time as a publicly viewable document, Subject: Poker said, "enough people saw the link that it is currently being passed around privately." Subject: Poker contacted the domain that hosted the initial leak, and the site owner disconnected the server on which it was hosted.
Social security numbers and financial information were not part of the spilled UB data, which affected two million U.S. players, 319,000 from Canada, 137,000 from the United Kingdom and 1 million from other countries.
Although their credit card and banking information appears to be safe, anyone who had a UB account is at risk for identity theft. An attacker with access to someone's name, email address and date of birth could wreak havoc on that victim's online life.
Ultimate Bet, along with PokerStars and Absolute Poker, has been offline since April 15, when the U.S. Department of Justice seized its domain and indicted its owners for money laundering, bank fraud and illegal gambling.