Hacked details of 100,000+ UK gun owners published online
29 October 2021
Ben O’Rourke In the latest fallout from the hack of the website Guntrader.uk, A new company replaces the company behind online gun listing service. In
In the latest fallout from the hack of the website Guntrader.uk, A new company replaces the company behind online gun listing service.
In a post on Facebook, a Guntrader senior official made the honest observation that due to the ‘compensation culture’, the old company ‘was forced into liquidation’. He continues: ‘Guntrader Media Ltd has taken over from guntrader.uk Ltd, and slowly bur surely we are getting sorted’.
Within 45 minutes, Guntrader’s Facebook admins replaced that message with a new, more corporate message that ‘Guntrader Media Ltd has taken over and as a result, there should be very little interruption to the service’.
Earlier in October, the owner of the site emailed clients to say that he has closed the firm’s account at Barclays but is now having problems finding a bank that will accept his company’s business.
Meanwhile, thieves are targeting gun-owners and police say a link with the Guntrader leak cannot be ruled out.
A Newton-on-Trent home was burgled in August 2021 and guns taken (reported here). Police say thieves grabbed a shotgun, air rifle, ammo and jewellery.
Another Fieldsports Channel viewer reports receiving phone calls from men offering to buy his guns. Police took this seriously enough to deploy an armed response team to guard the man’s house for four days.
The news in July that antis had their hands on Guntrader website user data, made UK gun owners nervous. That feeling was aggravated by the release in late August of a Google Earth overlay, pinpointing the addresses of anyone who registered with the site after 2016.
Available on the Hunting Leaks website, which is based beyond UK jurisdiction in Iceland, the antis ask their supporters, ‘please do contact as many as you can in your area and ask them if they are involved in shooting animals’.
Desmond – not his real name – tells Fieldsports News that the leak has made him wary about websites that store his personal details.
“Not just shooting-related websites,” he says. “It’s just anything now, even with whatever controls they have in place or laws we have in place, how easy they seem to have been retrieved.”
A statement from Guntrader says that using the stolen data to identify the potential locations of guns is a criminal offence and is “unlikely to occur”.
Daniel Bibb at Shooting Sports UK says he’s added extra security to his site in the wake of the Guntrader leak.
“There are a lot of things we all can do,” Daniel says, “like two-step authentication on passwords and stuff. That’s something we’ve implemented after this to try to stop this happening to us.”
Leaks by antis have plagued the fieldsports community for years. Journalist for The Register Gareth Corfield is concerned that this one crosses the line into terrorism. However, he plays down suggestions they will become more common.
“I think it’s less likely,” he says. “We shooters are not a particularly large segment of the population and once something like the Guntrader hack has occurred, the information is out there. That lessens its attractiveness to the hacker mentality. Once it’s been done, it’s been done.
“I think there’s probably going to be some localised spats, mostly related to things going on in the real world – the eternal hunt sabs versus fox hunts and so on, but I think the overall risk is now slightly lower because… there’s nothing there for the criminal elements to crow about and say ‘Look what we’ve achieved’.”
Wiltshire Police are believed to be investigating the leak. An National Crime Agency spokesperson told BASC: “The NCA is aware that information has been published online as a result of a recent data breach which impacted Guntrader. We are working closely with the South West Regional Cyber Crime Unit (SWRCCU), who are leading the criminal investigation, to support the organisation and manage any risk.”
Google confirms it has removed the map data from its servers.
Daniel Bibb owns Shooting Sports UK. Gareth Corfield is security and legal correspondent at The Register
Gun burglary sparks Guntrader hack link fear – Fieldsports News, 8 September 2021
8 September 2021
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpYZ6QC_cpE Here are the links:Burglars steal guns: is there a Guntrader leak link? – Fieldsports NewsNational Trust members to vote on trail-hunting ban – The
Guntrader attracts the lawyers – Fieldsports News, 11 August 2021
11 August 2021
youtu.be/27S0DGoar34 Here are the links:Solicitors swoop on Guntrader victims in bid to cash in on leak – Fieldsports News + Fieldsports News follow-upUniversity releases landmark
Hit by the Guntrader hack? Here’s what to do
21 July 2021
Here’s how you can quickly establish which of your accounts and passwords may have been compromised by the Guntrader hack (if you want details of
Guntrader.uk hacked – anger and denials
21 July 2021
A hacker has stolen information from the market-leading gun sales site Guntrader.uk. The data consists of names and addresses of registered users of the site,