The ‘.de’ Stealer Log Gave Hackers 55,869 German Logins to Exploit

In August 2024, HEROIC analysts identified a stealer log uploaded by a Telegram user under the filename ".de," a marker for German-linked accounts, exposing 55,869 records made up of email addresses, plaintext passwords, and the URLs each login belongs to.

What This Data Actually Hands an Attacker

With nearly 56,000 complete login sets in one file, an attacker does not need to do any additional work to start causing damage. Each record already pairs an email address with its plaintext password and the exact site it unlocks, meaning someone could sit down and start testing tens of thousands of live logins the same day the file surfaces, no cracking, no guessing, no decryption required.

What Was Exposed

• Email addresses, concentrated among German-linked accounts
• Plaintext passwords, stored and shared with no encryption
• URLs identifying the exact website or service tied to each login

Why This Matters

A leak of this size gives attackers enough volume to run automated credential stuffing campaigns across banking portals, email providers, and shopping sites, hoping a percentage of victims reused the same password elsewhere. For the people in this file, that means real exposure to account takeover, financial fraud, and identity theft, especially anyone who has not changed the exposed password since it was stolen.

How a Log This Large Gets Collected

Stealer malware infects devices one at a time, usually through cracked software, fake downloads, or malicious attachments, and quietly logs every username, password, and URL entered into a browser. To build a file of this scale, the operators behind this log likely combined data from many infected machines, filtered by region or language, before packaging it for distribution on Telegram. Grouping the data by country or domain suffix, like ".de," makes it easier for buyers to target a specific population.

Check If You Are Affected

With tens of thousands of records in play, the odds that your information is included are real. HEROIC's free breach scanner checks your email address against a database of more than 400 billion breached and leaked records, so you can find out in seconds and secure any account tied to an exposed password.