Andrew Tate’s ‘The Real World’ targeted by hacktivists, suffers data breach.
Andrew Tate, the polarizing internet personality and self-styled life coach, has built a devoted following through his online platform, The Real World. Formerly known as Hustler’s University, the subscription-based service promises entrepreneurial wisdom and a pathway to wealth, catering largely to young men seeking financial independence. Yet, in a recent twist, the platform suffered a major cyberattack that exposed sensitive data from nearly 800,000 users.
Who Hacked Andrew Tate’s Online University?
The breach was carried out by a group of anonymous hacktivists, individuals who leverage cyberattacks as a means of protest, as reported by the Daily Dot. These hackers claimed ideological motives, positioning themselves against what they saw as the harmful narratives perpetuated by Tate and his platform.
They described their actions as a form of digital activism, asserting that The Real World promoted toxic masculinity and exploitative ideologies. Beyond their critique of the platform’s content, they were particularly scathing about its technical vulnerabilities, which they derided as “hilariously insecure.”
Their mission, they stated, was twofold: to disrupt Tate’s operations and to expose the inadequate safeguards protecting users’ private information. By targeting a high-profile figure like Tate, the hacktivists aimed to make a statement that reverberated beyond his immediate audience.
How Hacktivists Hustled Andrew Tate
According to the hackers, The Real World failed to implement basic security protocols. The breach reportedly exploited a misconfigured database, a common yet preventable flaw that allowed unauthorized access to vast amounts of user data.
In addition to the database vulnerabilities, the hackers infiltrated both public and private chat servers, which housed conversations and content shared by users. The breach culminated in a public display of defiance during a live broadcast of Tate’s Emergency Meeting episode on the video platform Rumble. Hackers hijacked the chatroom, flooding it with emojis and symbols associated with feminist and LGBTQ+ communities.
The compromised data included nearly 800,000 usernames, over 300,000 email addresses, and messages exchanged across hundreds of servers. The entirety of data has been published by the transparency non-profit Distributed Denial of Secrets, which states on their website that, “the logs are taken from the platform’s 221 public and 395 private chat servers, which are spread across a dozen “campuses.” According to the site’s metrics, it generates approximately $5,650,000 monthly. The data also includes 324,382 unique email addresses that appear to belong to users who were removed from the main database after they stopped paying their subscriptions.
Find Out If You Were Exposed By The Data Breach
The data from the breach of Andrew Tate’s The Real World has been added to Have I Been Pwned, a widely used service that allows individuals to check if their credentials have been exposed in data breaches. Users can visit and enter their email addresses to see if their information was part of this incident.
If your email address appears in the database, it’s crucial to take immediate action:
• Change your passwords for any affected accounts.
• Ensure your new passwords are strong and unique.
• Enable multi-factor authentication wherever possible.
• Stay vigilant for phishing emails or other suspicious activity targeting your accounts.
Andrew Tate’s The Real World has been contacted for comment but has yet to respond.
