Hacker had access to Pirate Party membership administration

A hacker has broken into the Pirate Party’s databases. The membership administration may also have been accessible. The party is currently investigating whether data has actually been downloaded from the databases.

The hack took place on Sunday, exactly on the day that the Pirate Party had a general meeting of members, the party has announced. The hacker had access to source files from the website and databases, the party said. After the hack, the website was offline for some time.

“The board is currently trying to figure everything out,” said Dirk Poot, who was the party’s leader in 2012. “But it looks like the hacker pulled information from multiple databases.” This concerns, among other things, the membership administration and the webmail service of the Pirate Party.

The party is currently investigating how much information the hacker actually captured and whether he also had access to the party’s LDAP environment. The pirates advise members to change their passwords for the party’s mail service and ldap environment as a precaution. It is unknown whether the hacker also modified source files of the website, for example to build in a sniffer that captures text input.