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Singer Justin Bieber's fans have allegedly had their personal details leaked by a hacking group. (Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
A new hacking collective are alleged to have leaked personal details of at least 50,000 Justin Bieber and Amy Winehouse fans.
The self-titled SwagSec (short for Swagger Security) first came to prominence on Friday, July 1st, when they replaced Amy Winehouse’s website with explicit tirades against the “white devil” and other hacking groups, and posted a link to the personal details of music fans through their twitter feed.
At least 5,000 Justin Bieber fans from the United Kingdom have had their home address, phone number, date of birth, email address and password information made public. The data is a list of competition entries to bring the teenage pop singer to their home town.
An alternative leak offers an archive stolen from the Universal Music UK website, with one report by The Next Web claiming it contains almost 50,000 passwords for Amy Winehouse fans.
The original hack on Amy Winehouse’s website on Friday came with a warning that the group intended to leak personal data from fans of Universal Music artists, specifically mentioning Justin Bieber and Amy Winehouse, but also Lady Gaga, Def Jam and Klaxons. SwagSec claim that the amount of information on Lady Gaga fans is considerable.
The reasons for a specific campaign against Universal Music artists is unclear, but they are not the first hacking group to target the major label. Another group called AntiSec recently released a torrent offering umusic.com user passwords.
Both hacking groups make it clear they are not associated with Anonymous, the group alleged to be responsible for bringing the Sony PlayStation service offline.Tom Davenport is a writer and recording engineer from Wiltshire, England. He can be found on twitter as @TomDavenport.
