Is Your Email in the Reported Electronics For Beginners Leak?
HEROIC analysts reported finding a file tied to Electronics For Beginners, a hobbyist electronics tutorial community, that may expose 1,452 records collected around August 2023. The file reportedly contains email addresses paired with hashed passwords, and it was passed around a hacking forum before landing on Telegram. The only way to know if your own information is sitting in it is to scan your email.
What Was Exposed
Key findingThis breach exposed email addresses and hashed passwords for 1,452 records.
What the Reported File Reportedly Contains
- Email Address: confirms a working inbox an attacker can target with phishing or spam built around this breach.
- Password Hash: the password was reportedly stored in hashed form; HEROIC cannot confirm how strong that hashing was, so it should be treated as potentially recoverable.
How a File Like This Usually Surfaces
Files built this way are typically pulled from a website's own backend systems rather than collected from individual devices. Once a copy leaves the original service, it tends to get copied, repackaged, and reposted across forums and messaging channels, often long after the original incident, which is why old data keeps resurfacing.
Data exposed in this breach
Email addresses appear in 100% of the 1,452 records in this breach, alongside hashed passwords (100%).
Even on their own, leaked email addresses are useful to attackers: they confirm the address is in use and put it on phishing and spam lists.
- Domain
- electronics-for-beginners.com
- Date leaked
- 01 Aug 2023
- Records in breach
- 1,452
Email providers and account types
65.8% of the email addresses in this breach are personal mailboxes and 34.2% are work addresses. The most common provider is gmail.com, followed by hotmail.com and yahoo.com.
Work addresses matter because a password reused on a company account can give attackers a way into that organisation. The company domains below show which employers appear most often.
Mailbox type
- Personal mailboxes65.8%
- Work mailboxes34.2%
Email providers
- 1gmail.com342
- 2hotmail.com145
- 3yahoo.com126
- 4aol.com50
- 5yandex.ru40
- 6163.com38
- 7mail.ru29
- 8outlook.com19
- 9tom.com12
- 10126.com11
- 11yahoo.co.in10
- 12rediffmail.com9
- 13sohu.com9
- 14yandex.com8
- 15yahoo.co.uk8
Company domains
| # | Domain | Accounts | Share of records |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | loginadulttoys.com | 14 | 1% |
| 2 | yeah.net | 12 | 0.8% |
| 3 | onsaleadult.com | 12 | 0.8% |
| 4 | uastar.net | 11 | 0.8% |
| 5 | linkadulttoys.com | 11 | 0.8% |
| 6 | feeladult.com | 11 | 0.8% |
| 7 | peugeot-club.org | 10 | 0.7% |
| 8 | gawab.com | 9 | 0.6% |
| 9 | pickadulttoys.com | 9 | 0.6% |
| 10 | iihost.net | 9 | 0.6% |
| 11 | brightadult.com | 8 | 0.6% |
| 12 | livejournali.com | 7 | 0.5% |
| 13 | atlaskit.com | 7 | 0.5% |
| 14 | oncesex.com | 7 | 0.5% |
| 15 | pozitifff.com | 6 | 0.4% |
Password Analysis
Why a Hobby Site Login Can Still Hurt You
A tutorial community does not feel like a high value target, which is exactly why attackers like it. People reuse the same email and password pair everywhere, so a login built for swapping soldering tips can unlock a mail account, a shopping cart, or a work tool if the same credentials were reused there.
Once an attacker has a working email address, they also have a direct line for phishing messages crafted to look like they come from a trusted source.
The Real Cost of a Reused Password
If this password was used anywhere else, an attacker who cracks or guesses it can walk straight into those other accounts. That can mean a hijacked email inbox, drained loyalty points, or a foothold for identity theft that starts quietly and escalates over weeks.
Could Your Login Be in This File?
Start by running a scan your email check to see whether your address turns up in this or any other exposure. If it does and you ever reused that password anywhere, change it everywhere it was used, swapping in a unique password for each account from now on. This matters whether the address you check is a personal inbox or a work one, since either can unlock the rest of your digital life.
Password storage and hashing
Of the hashed passwords, 100% use MD5 or NTLM. 100% use fast or reversible methods such as MD5, NTLM or SHA-1, which are quick to crack.
Hashing only protects a password if the method is slow. bcrypt, scrypt and Argon2 are designed to slow attackers down; MD5, NTLM and SHA-1 were designed for speed, which makes them easy to crack in bulk.
Hash types
- MD5 or NTLM100%
Leaked in this breach: email address, password hash
Is your email in the Electronics For Beginners leak?
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Threat Intelligence
Key finding6 records from electronics-for-beginners.com staff appear in 3 other breaches.
Employees of electronics-for-beginners.com in other breaches
6 records from electronics-for-beginners.com staff turn up in 3 other breaches. The most common sources are Verifications.io, XSS.IS Combolist and Misc Combolists.
50% of these staff passwords are reused, so a password leaked in one of these breaches may still open a work account. Organisations in this position should reset passwords for the affected addresses and require multi-factor authentication.
Company staff exposure
Staff email addresses
- 1e*****b@electronics-for-beginners.com2
- 2b*****o@electronics-for-beginners.com1
- 3b*****t@electronics-for-beginners.com1
- 4b*****d@electronics-for-beginners.com1
- 5s*****s@electronics-for-beginners.com1
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