Clixsense Hacked: unable to login? (Temporary issue: Reported on 4 September 2016)

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Clixsense Hacked: explanations + (daily) updates!

This Sunday, you may have had a shock if you tried to access one of the most famous paid-to-click that goes by the name of Clixsense.

Ooops! Huge clixsense login problem!

Surprisingly, it looks like the website got compromised by a malicious hacker as it’s currently redirecting to an adult website (which displays gay porn content — “youporngay”).

The issue was first reported on forums about one hour ago and it has been massively confirmed by worldwide affiliates since then.

Clixsense Hack: update on 5-8 September 2016

EDIT 10) Database leak:

Have I been pwned?, a website dealing with data breach issues, reported to have received millions of plaintext passwords and details from the Clixsense database.
Make sure you change any password and details that could put you at risk!

ClixSense suffered a data breach which exposed 2.4 million subscriber identities. The breached data was then posted online by the attackers who claimed it was a subset of a larger data breach totalling 6.6 million records. The leaked data was extensive and included names, physical, email and IP addresses, genders and birth dates, account balances and passwords stored as plain text.

Compromised data: Account balances, Dates of birth, Email addresses, Genders, IP addresses, Names, Passwords, Payment histories, Payment methods, Physical addresses, Usernames, Website activity

EDIT 9) Final Update: 11 September:

(…) He was able to gain access to this not directly but instead through an old server we were no longer using that had a connection to our database server. (This server has since been terminated).

He was able to copy most if not all of our users table, he ran some SQL code that changed the names on accounts to “hacked account” and deleted many forum posts. He also set user balances to $0.00.
(…)
What does this all mean? Simply put, your ClixSense account information is now much more secure. We did a forced password change as a precautionary measure and many of you have already changed your emails as well. If by chance you have used the same password here as other services (such as your email, Paypal or another PTC, etc..) please make sure you change these passwords too.

EDIT 8) Update from Clixsense owner:

To say the last 3 days have not been hell is an understatement. We are trying to take all the necessary precautions we can to make sure we do not leave one stone unturned. If anything this whole event will make us better.

I cannot tell you what will happen next or if we’ll go offline again but I will make sure I keep everyone updated here.

I also cannot get into details about what the FBI has informed me but this is progressing forward with a very positive lead.

Keep the faith guys (and gals) and thanks for your support.

Jim

EDIT 7) Clixsense SSL (HTTPS://) seem to be enabled.
From here, in Belgium, the content, the images and the CSS currently appear to be broken through the HTTPS version of the website (probably propagating or they need to FORCE_SSL).

EDIT 6) Clixsense Password Change:
A new password will be sent to your email inbox upon your first login attempt.

Check for an email with the title: “Your Clixsense Login Details“.
If you do not receive it (wait 5-15 minutes), check your spam folder and/or add “noreply@clixsense.com” in your contact list and retrieve it again.

Once you are logged in, you may surf to “Your Username” > “Profile and Settings” to update the password to a personal one (do not use the one you were using before the hacking event).
Be sure you click “Update Account” to validate the new credentials. Do not use your old password anymore, otherwise, you will keep receiving new emails with temporary passwords.

EDIT 5) The Clixsense Forum is currently under maintenance.

EDIT 4) Clixsense balances reinitialized: members reported to have balance at zero (clixsense balances did reset or are even in negative) as well as their names changed to “hacked”.
Some people also see a blank / white screen rather than the website. It seems that the data are still showing through the Clixsense forum or Clixsense Add-on (“Clixaddon”).

EDIT 3) Numerous reports are saying clixsense is not loading anymore.
It returns an error: 502 Bad Gateway nginx/1.10.1 or ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED

EDIT 2) Some members who managed to access and login to the official website reported that the Clixsense Ads are not working after the hacking event (same goes for the Clixsense Surveys).

Clixsense ads timer is not running. “This add is not loaded properly”. (See below the recommendation to fix the issues)

EDIT 1) Several people are now reporting that Clixsense redirects them to the Google homepage.

What’s happening? And why am I seeing gay porn in clixsense or google is opening instead of clixsense?
More details below!

Clixsense Down: why the site is currently offline?

So what happened to clixsense?

We can imagine that someone has been upset — and used it’s hacking “skills” as a mean of revenge.

But displaying adult content to a public audience (which probably includes minors) is legally and ethically wrong.
 

As the Paid-To-Click is used to receive a huge volume of traffic on a daily basis,
we can only wish that the admin is already aware of the issue and will be able to fix this issue shortly.

Clixsense Maintenance: website unreachable:

There are some people who are panicking immediately when such issues occur: is Clixsense Scam? Definitely not.

Clixsense is not closed, it is just temporarily unavailable (clixsense down today) as the website has been hacked.

Yes, Clixsense URLs are currently being redirected and show a porn site.

The owner is based in the United States. By considering the current local time, we can expect to see him to awake soon. Let’s hope he will be able to resolve the issue or get the help of his IT team on a Sunday.

Clixsense Redirected: official message from the Admin:

The Clixsense Owner posted a message about the current situation on a well-known “money-making” forum.

Jim let us know that he is aware about the issue and that the team is working on it:

Hello Everyone, first let me apologize for the issues today. Over the last several weeks we have been the target of a hacker who I believe first created the bot csadviewer and then moved on to submitting ads that when a viewer opened an attachment that popped up they got infected and their PC was compromised. Today, this hacker changed our DNS to a wonderful gay porn site. They removed our websites and email and of course with it being Sunday its hard to get any support. My phone has been ringing off the hook and my email blowing up. Please do not call or write in. We’re definitely aware of this problem.

He provides us an explanation about what happened, let us know that the account information are safe and that actions will be taken:

The ClixSense servers were not hacked and all of our servers are still intact and your account information was not affected. As I said above, it’s a DNS hack. It may take a bit for the site to come back online due to propagation but it will be back as soon as possible. I have a close friend who works with the FBI Cyber Crimes who I will reach out to later today and let them know as we’re going to open an investigation on this.

Again, I am sorry this happened and it’s certainly not the way I planned to start my Sunday.

Thanks
Jim Grago
ClixSense.com

Jim did show a real professionalism over the years; so I’m guessing he will have the required backups and tools to put Clixsense back online ASAP.

Clixsense Not Working: DNS Propagation:

They did not hijack our DNS, they took over the DNS account and changed our DNS settings. I talked with CloudFlare this morning and apparently I’m not the only one affected. We hope to have the site back online very soon.

Sorry for the delay.

Jim Grago
ClixSense.com

The issue is being handled by the team.

But it will require a new DNS propagation (How long does it takes?) to avoid that the clixsense domain get redirected to that gay porn site.

In the meantime, I would highly recommend you to suspend your advertising campaigns.
 

Why? Because as long as this problem persists your affiliate link will redirect to the wrong place:

• You will not get any referrals to your account (obviously).

 

• You are promoting adult content to the mass (including 18- public).

 

• People (or even the administrators) may think you are breaking the Terms Of Services and flag/ban you.

Let’s hope we hear an update from Jim in the next few hours. Stay tuned! :)

Ps. Adhitz.com, another website run by Jim Grago, is still online and running smooth.

Clixsense Website: How to fix the issue?

If the DNS propagation is not fully deployed on your country, the following guidelines may not work yet…

1- Clear your browser cookies:

If you are not sure how to proceed, check this tutorial: 11 Ways to Clear Your Browser cookies

2- Flush your DNS:

For PC users, see instructions here.

For MAC users, open the terminal and flush your DNS (how to do this?)

If the steps above does not work, the DNS propagation is not completed yet in your country.

3- Alternative (temporary) fix: for advanced users only:

Do not try this option, if you are not sure about what you are doing.

Go to your “hosts” file, open it with Notepad or another text processor and add the following lines:

209.133.204.26 clixsense.com
209.133.204.26 www.clixsense.com
209.133.192.122 csstatic.com
127.0.0.1 www.youporngay.com (or whatever gay porn site you are redirected to).

When the issue is fixed in next few hours/days, edited back your “hosts” file.

4- Clixsense View Ads not working: an official message from Jim Grago:

Members if any of you are experiencing issues with the site such as unable to view ads or your getting a redirect please do the following:

Can you please hit CTRL-SHIFT-DEL (all together, you must hold each of the keys down) on your keyboard. Then in the window that opens clear your temporary internet cache including cookies. (Click temporary files and cookies).

Alternately if you have the program ccleaner from www.ccleaner.com you can run this instead to clear your temp files and cookies.

Thank you

Clixsense Reset: My recommendations:

EDIT: if you are not in a hurry to access your clixsense account, we recommend you to delay your login until the SSL encryption (HTTPS://) is fully functional.

Otherwise, the session key is not used to encrypt all transmitted data. See here to learn more about the potential risks to login through a non SSL form.

EDIT: The recent events, such as the Clixsense balance being zeroed or usernames changed to “Hacked”, let me think that what we are facing is more than just a “DNS Hijacking”.

The database was either hijacked or hacked as well. If you used your Clixsense passwords on other websites, I would recommend you to update the passwords ASAP.

Better be safe than sorry.

EDIT: According to the owner, this would not be required: see the official communication below:

Members, I apologize for taking the site offline without warning but it seems this hacker was able to find an exploit and was able to remotely change the names and balances on some accounts. Some of you will need to reenter your names. None of your personal account information was exposed. We were able to restore many account names but we did not want to restore this information from our backup because it would mean much longer time offline so we made the decision to have some of you re-enter your first and last name.

We understand this is a major inconvenience to all of you as this person is causing us much grief. But, on a side note, we’ve opened an investigation with the FBI and they are now investigating to try and find this person.

Again I am very sorry for all of this and please be patient with us. We are doing the best we can to restore things back to where they should be.

Thank you

Let us know in comment if it’s working fine from your country and/or if the guidelines above helped to fix it manually! :)

If you have more information, feedback or wish to discuss on the topic — feel free to post your comments below! :)

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