12,441 Plaintext Passwords From Cycling Archives Hit a Hacking Forum

In August 2018, HEROIC analysts identified 12,441 records from Cycling Archives, a now-defunct French database dedicated to professional cycling, circulating on a prominent hacking forum. The exposed data included email addresses and plaintext passwords, meaning anyone who found this dataset could read the credentials directly without any cracking required.

Why the Cycling Archives Breach Is Dangerous

Plaintext passwords are the worst-case scenario in a data breach. Unlike hashed passwords that require additional work to exploit, these credentials are immediately usable. Attackers can try each email and password pair on Gmail, banking apps, and social platforms in seconds using automated tools. Anyone who reused their Cycling Archives password elsewhere is at continued risk today, more than seven years after the breach occured.

What Was Exposed in the Cycling Archives Leak

• Email addresses
• Plaintext passwords

Why This Cycling Archives Data Puts You at Risk

Credential stuffing attacks rely on datasets exactly like this one. Cybercriminals load the 12,441 email and password pairs into automated tools and fire them at hundreds of websites simultaneously. Even if a user changed their Cycling Archives password years ago, the email address alone can be used for targeted phishing or sold to spammers. The combination of both fields in plaintext makes this one of the higher-risk data types in any breach database.

How a Database Combolist Works

This breach originated from a database dump, meaning someone gained direct access to Cycling Archives' backend and extracted user records in bulk. The data was then packaged into a combolist format, which pairs email addresses with their corresponding passwords in a single file. These files are traded freely on hacking forums and used to fuel automated login attacks across the internet.

Check If Your Data Was Exposed

HEROIC operates one of the world's largest breach databases, covering more than 400 billion leaked records. Use HEROIC's free breach scanner to check if your email address or credentials appeared in the Cycling Archives leak or thousands of other breaches in our database.