Malwarebytes data breach

Breach date: 2014-11-15. Added to this index: 2016-03-09. Accounts affected: about 112K. Domain: malwarebytes.org.

What happened

In November 2014, the Malwarebytes forum was hacked and 111k member records were exposed. The IP.Board forum included email and IP addresses, birth dates and passwords stored as salted hashes using a weak implementation enabling many to be rapidly cracked.

Breach data sourced from Have I Been Pwned, used under CC BY 4.0. Additional breach metadata provided by XposedOrNot. DataExposed is an independent service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by either.

What was exposed

  • Dates of birth: Your full birth date, day, month and year, collected at signup for age checks, identity verification, insurance quotes, birthday offers or government services.
  • Email addresses: The email address you used to register or log in. It is the most common field in breaches because it doubles as your username on most sites.
  • IP addresses: The network addresses your devices used when you signed up, logged in or posted, recorded by almost every website in its access logs.
  • Passwords: The secret you use to sign in, stored by the breached service either in plain text, in a scrambled form called a hash, or encrypted. How it was stored decides how quickly it can be recovered.
  • Usernames: The handle or login name you chose for an account, which may be public on forums, games and social platforms or used privately to sign in.
  • Website activity: Records of your actions on a website or app, such as pages viewed, searches, clicks, downloads, logins, cart activity, IP addresses and timestamps.

What to do now

  1. Check whether your own address is in this dataset with the free email breach check.
  2. Change the password on this service and every other site where you used the same password.
  3. Turn on two-factor authentication on your email account first, because it is the reset path for everything else.
  4. Treat calls and messages that quote real details about you as hostile until you verify them another way.

Frequently asked questions

What data was leaked in the Malwarebytes breach?

The Malwarebytes breach exposed Dates of birth, Email addresses, IP addresses, Passwords, Usernames, Website activity. About 112K accounts were affected.

Was I affected by the Malwarebytes breach?

Run the free email breach check with the address you used on that service. It will tell you whether your address appears in this dataset.

What should I do about the Malwarebytes breach?

Change the password on that account and everywhere you reused it, then turn on two-factor authentication. Passwords from this breach are traded and tried automatically against other sites.

Next steps