Hackers steal user info from millions of Pirate Bay users

According to Brian Krebs, up until December an Internet security reporter with The Washington Post, an Argentinian hacker called Ch Russo penetrated The Pirate Bay, one of the world's leading BitTorrent search engines, and snatched "user names, e-mail and Internet addresses of more than 4 million of the site's users."

Reporting on his blog, Krebsonsecurity.com, Krebs said that to prove the validity of his claims, Russo sent Krebs' own username and password for The Pirate Bay. Krebs confirmed that the information was accurate.

Russo acknowledged that he and an associate who helped get into The Pirate Bay considered selling the data to the big music labels or Hollywood studios, but instead went public about the site's vulnerabilities.