Inside the ExplosiveGaming Breach: How 54,429 Passwords Leaked

HEROIC analysts have added the ExplosiveGaming data breach to our records. ExplosiveGaming, a now-defunct US-based gaming forum, was breached on September 1, 2015, exposing 54,429 unique records. The compromised data includes email addresses and plaintext passwords, which were posted on a prominent hacking forum.

Why This Is Dangerous

Because these passwords were stored and leaked in plaintext, there is no encryption for an attacker to break through. Each of the 54,429 records pairs a former forum member's email address directly with their exact password, giving anyone who obtains this file everything needed to attempt a login anywhere that password was reused, even a decade after the forum itself shut down.

What Was Exposed

• Email addresses
• Plaintext passwords

Why This Matters

A leak like this one is a straightforward resource for credential stuffing, where attackers automatically test old email and password combinations against banking sites, email providers, and social media platforms. Because gaming forum accounts are often set up years before someone thinks carefully about password hygiene, this kind of leak frequently surfaces old passwords that are still in use elsewhere, leading to account takeover, identity theft, or financial fraud.

How This Combolist Was Created

ExplosiveGaming's breach is classified as a database and combolist incident. That means attackers first gained access to the forum's own user database, then compiled the stolen records into a combolist, a simple file pairing each email address with its matching password. Combolists like this one continue circulating on hacking forums for years, even after the original site has shut down, because they remain effective against anyone who never changed the exposed password.

Check If You Are Affected

If you ever had an account on ExplosiveGaming, your email and password may still be circulating on hacking forums today. HEROIC's free breach scanner checks your email against a database of more than 400 billion leaked records, including the ExplosiveGaming breach, so you can find out quickly whether your information was exposed.