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2013 breach at Russian cybercrime forum resurfaces with millions of victims’ credentials
A 2013 breach of Russian-language cybercrime forum YouHack has been added to Have I Been Pwned, exposing 7.2 million unique email addresses. The records include login details for forum members and credentials they had shared about other people, illustrating how a breach can affect people beyond the site’s users.
About 107,000 addresses belonged to YouHack members; their exposed details included usernames, IP addresses and mostly unsalted MD5 password hashes, which are weak protection. The data was later included in the 2024 “Mother of all Breaches”, a 12-terabyte collection containing 26 billion records from multiple incidents. Separately, HIBP reported that a 2023 breach of Sberbank’s SberSpasibo loyalty programme contained 48 million user records, including 3.3 million email addresses.
In short
- YouHack’s 2013 breach exposed 7.2 million email addresses.
- Around 107,000 were linked to forum members.
- HIBP also catalogued 48 million SberSpasibo records.
Explained simply
YouHack was a Russian-language online forum where people discussed cybercrime and shared stolen data. A breach is when information held by a website is accessed or copied without permission; the records can include details about both account holders and other people mentioned in what users shared.
Passwords are often stored as coded strings called hashes, but older methods can make them easier to crack. Email addresses and reused passwords may also put people at risk on other services, while IP addresses can reveal information about where someone connected from.
Cybersecurity Europe Technology World