6,622 Passwords From the AWT World Trade Inc. Breach Surfaced Online

HEROIC analysts identified a database breach affecting AWT World Trade Inc., a US-based trading company, dating back to February 22, 2016. The exposed file contains 6,622 records, including email addresses, usernames, and passwords hashed with MD5.

Why the AWT World Trade Inc. Breach Is Dangerous

MD5 is a weak hashing method by today's standards. Attackers can run freely available cracking tools and precomputed lookup tables against MD5 hashes and recover a large share of the original passwords, particularly ones that are short or common. Once cracked, a password works exactly like a stolen plaintext credential, and here it comes paired with a real email address and username.

What Was Exposed in the AWT World Trade Inc. Breach

• Email addresses
• Usernames
• Passwords (hashed with MD5)

Why This Matters

Business email addresses tied to a trading company are a valuable target, not just for account takeover but for business email compromise scams, where attackers impersonate a real employee or partner to redirect payments or extract sensitive information. If anyone connected to AWT World Trade Inc. reused this password on another account, whether personal or professional, that account should be treated as compromised.

How This Database Breach Happened

This breach fits the pattern of a direct database export, an attacker gaining access to AWT World Trade Inc.'s backend systems and extracting the full user table, including email addresses, usernames, and password hashes, in a single action. Storing those passwords with MD5, rather than a modern hashing algorithm, made the data considerably easier to exploit once it began circulating on hacking forums.

Check If You Are Affected

If you or your business ever had an account tied to AWT World Trade Inc., or you reuse passwords across work and personal accounts, it's worth checking your exposure. HEROIC's free breach scanner searches a database of more than 400 billion leaked records, so you can find out where your email address has appeared and change any passwords that are still at risk.