Cereus Network Data Breach (2011)

In the latest news from the doomed Cereus Network, it has been revealed that Ultimate Bet player data was recently leaked onto the internet. While the information was only discovered this week, the information has been on that website since November 20th. The information is presented in many spreadsheets sorted by country. There are over 3 million Ultimate Bet accounts exposed. Absolute Poker players do not appear to be affected by this leak. The website with the exposed player data is not related to Ultimate Bet. It is not known who owns the website or how they obtained the information. The information in the leak appears to have been taken from the Ultimate Bet player database in late 2010. The information that was leaked includes: First name Last name Username Email address Phone number Street address Account balance (as of late 2010) IP addresses Deposit methods (but does not include actual bank account or ewallet info) Date of birth Ultimate Bet account number VIP status Affiliate information Blacklist status Some accounts had what appears to be encrypted passwords A post linking to the website was live on the Two Plus Two poker forum for less than ten minutes. The poster of the information was the one that deleted it. Moderators at Two Plus Two have contacted the websites host in an attempt to have the information removed. At this point, the information is still live on the website. To reiterate, no player banking information was posted but some personal information could be used to commit identity fraud. The name, address and date of birth information could be abused. Players that still have money in their Ultimate Bet accounts should immediately change their password. Players that may have used the same password at Ultimate Bet that they used at other online poker rooms or other secure websites should immediately change their passwords. Changing the password for the email address used at Ultimate Bet to something more secure is also suggested, regardless of whether it matches the password used at Ultimate Bet. The Cereus Network, which consists of Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, recently announced that they would be entering liquidation. The Cereus Network has essentially been bankrupt since key employees were named in the Black Friday indictments on April 15, 2011. Cereus had bank accounts seized and have paid out only a small fraction of their liability to players outside of the U.S. Players located in the U.S. have not received any payments since Black Friday.