Your Hotmail Login May Be Exposed in the Hotmail Access _3 Leak

In November 2024, HEROIC analysts found a combolist labeled HOTMAIL ACCESS _3 uploaded by a user on Telegram. The file contained 3,753 records made up of email addresses, plaintext passwords, and URLs, specifically targeting Hotmail accounts. Why This Is Dangerous: this combolist gives an attacker a ready-made list of working email and password pairs, filtered specifically for Hotmail logins. Because the passwords are stored in plaintext, there is no encryption to break, so an attacker can attempt to sign into these inboxes right away. What Was Exposed: the file includes Hotmail email addresses used to sign into accounts, plaintext passwords tied to each address, and URLs identifying the login pages the credentials belong to. Why This Matters: access to a Hotmail inbox often means access to much more, since email is commonly used to reset passwords on other services. Anyone whose account appears in this file faces the risk of account takeover, and if the same password was reused elsewhere, that risk extends to credential stuffing on other accounts, potential identity theft, or financial fraud. How a Combolist Like This Gets Made: combolists targeting a specific email provider like Hotmail are usually built by pulling matching email and password pairs from older breaches, phishing pages, or malware-infected devices, then filtering the results down to just the accounts using that provider before packaging them for sale or sharing on Telegram. Check If You Are Affected: if you use Hotmail or any other email provider and want to know whether your address appears in this combolist or another leak, HEROIC's free breach scanner checks your information against a database of more than 400 billion leaked records, so you can find out quickly and secure your account.