Bijbel Data Breach — August 2018: 21,731 US Records Exposed

Bijbel: A Religious Platform's Plaintext Password Exposure and Why Category Matters

In August 2018, Bijbel -- a now-defunct US-based religious platform -- was breached, exposing 21,731 user records containing email addresses and plaintext passwords. The dataset later appeared on a prominent hacking forum. What distinguishes this breach from a generic entertainment or retail platform compromise is the category: religious affiliation is classified as a sensitive personal data type under GDPR and analogous privacy frameworks worldwide. A user's membership in a congregaton, their reading of religious texts online, their participation in faith-based communities -- these are data points that carry social, professional, and in some jurisdictions legal implications if exposng them. The plaintext password storage compounds the breach's impact by making every record immediately actionable for credential stuffing.

Bijbel (August 2018): Data Breach Summary

• Records Exposed: 21,731
• Data Types: Email addresses, plaintext passwords
• Breach Type: Database breach -- credentials exfiltrated from a compromised server database
• Password Type: Plaintext -- stored without hashing or encryption
• Country: United States
• Date Leaked: August 26, 2018

Religious Affiliation as Sensitive Personal Data

The name "Bijbel" is Dutch for "Bible," and the platform served users seeking religous content in an English-language context despite the Dutch name. Regardless of the specific community the platform served, registration on a religious platform constitutes a data point about a person's faith, beliefs, or at minimum their interest in religious content. Privacy regulations from GDPR to CCPA treat religious belief as a heightened-sensitivity category specifically because its disclosure can lead to discrimination, social stigma, or harm. When this category of data is paired with plaintext passwords and circulated on criminal forums, the potential for targeted social engineering -- exploiting a victim's known religious context -- adds a layer of risk beyond standard credential stuffing.

The August 26, 2018 Breach Wave and Platform Security

The Bijbel breach on August 26, 2018 shares its disclosure date with The DesignQuest (India, MD5 hashes) and Teksty Dajemy (Poland, MD5 hashes), all tracked in HEROIC's database. This clustering of breach disclosure dates is a common pattern when data brokers post multiple acquired datasets simultaneously to a forum, suggesting a single source or aggregator was responsible for surfacing all three. The August 2018 wave affected platforms across three countries and multiple categories, all sharing the characteristic of being smaller, niche platforms with limited security resources -- the type of target that criminal data brokers often sweep together rather than attacking individually.

Combolist Aggregation and the Long Reach of 2018 Data

Data from the August 2018 Bijbel breach has been incorporated into combolist aggregations that continue to circulate in criminal markets today. Combolists -- large files containing millions of email/password pairs drawn from multiple breach sources -- are used for credential stuffing campaigns that test each pair against a target service's login endpoint. A user who registered on Bijbel in 2017 with a password they also use on their primary email account has been at risk since August 26, 2018, whether or not they ever learned of the breach. HEROIC's breach index tracks historical datasets like this to surface that risk and give users the information they need to act.

Check If Your Data Was Exposed

HEROIC's free breach scanner searches across more than 400 billion exposed records, including the Bijbel breach and thousands of other historical database compromises. Run a free scan at HEROIC.com to see if your email address appears in this or any related dataset.