Infotex

We noticed a significant influx of credential stuffing attempts targeting various enterprise services shortly after August 26, 2018. This pattern immediately suggested the emergence of a new, large-scale credential leak. What struck us was the relatively low "pwned count" of just over 4900 records, which, while not massive in absolute terms, indicated a highly concentrated and potentially valuable dataset. The specific combination of email addresses and MD5 hashed passwords pointed towards a common, albeit outdated, hashing algorithm, often found in older or less rigorously secured databases. The rapid dissemination on a prominent hacking forum further amplified its potential impact.

The Infotex breach, discovered on August 26, 2018, involved approximately 4902 unique records. The exposed data primarily consisted of email addresses and MD5 hashed passwords. Analysis of the leaked data structure suggests it originated from a database, likely a user account repository. The presence of MD5 hashes, a relatively weak hashing algorithm, makes these credentials particularly susceptible to brute-force or dictionary attacks, especially when combined with readily available email addresses. The data was subsequently shared on a well-known hacking forum, increasing its accessibility to malicious actors and facilitating its use in combolists for widespread credential stuffing campaigns.

While this specific Infotex breach did not generate widespread mainstream news coverage at the time, it aligns with a broader trend observed in late 2018 of attackers leveraging older, less secure hashing methods from various platforms to build extensive combolists. Security researchers at the time frequently highlighted the continued effectiveness of MD5-hashed credentials in credential stuffing attacks due to the ease of cracking them. The Infotex leak, though smaller in scale, contributed to this ongoing threat landscape, providing attackers with a fresh set of credentials for their automated attack operations.