Some customers who signed up for a Disney+ subscription may have had their login information stolen and sold online. It only took a few hours after the service launched on November 12th before users’ login credentials started to appear for sale on hacking forums across the dark web. According to a report from ZDNet published last week, accounts that normally cost $6.99 a month were being sold for anywhere between $3 to $11.
At this point, it’s unclear how so much user info was obtained, but the report speculates that along with key-logging malware, one likely culprit the re-use of email and password combos that may have been leaked from other sites. So, if someone’s Disney+ login was the same as their Instagram login, and that information was made public after a massive Instagram leak in May, it was used to gain access to the streaming platform.
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Earlier this week, Disney responded via a statement to Variety, which insisted that only a small number of the roughly 10 million users have been affected and that they had “found no evidence of a security breach.”
“We continuously audit our security systems and when we find an attempted suspicious login we proactively lock the associated user account and direct the user to select a new password.” They also addressed the email/password possibility, stating that “billions of usernames and passwords leaked from previous breaches at other companies, pre-dating the launch of Disney+, are being sold on the web.”
This is far from the only issue plaguing the House of Mouse’s new streaming service in the week-and-a-half since going live. Multiple users complained of technical problems on launch day, and with no real customer service to speak of to help resolve the issues, created something of a backlash.
There’s also some glaring omissions from the Disney+ platform, like the absence of a ‘continue watching’ option to make viewing more convenient, which is also a standard feature on more established streamers like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video. Additionally, the fact that some users have discovered apparent expiration dates on certain titles hasn’t been sitting well, as the primary appeal of Disney+ was to have the ability to queue up (at least most of) the massive Disney vault.
Since launching last Tuesday, Disney+ is currently boasting roughly 10 million customers.
