German Audiophiles Targeted in MAZ Sound’s 6,014-Record Breach

HEROIC analysts identified a dataset from MAZ Sound, a now-defunct German audiophile website where users rated and discussed audio systems, circulating on a hacking forum. The data was posted on August 26, 2018, and contains 6,014 user records made up of email addresses and MD5 password hashes.

Why This Is Dangerous

MD5 is a weak, outdated hashing method that modern cracking tools can break through quickly using precomputed tables and brute-force methods. Anyone who obtains this dataset can recover a large share of the original passwords, then try each one against other accounts belonging to the same email address.

What Was Exposed in the MAZ Sound Breach

• Email addresses of registered MAZ Sound members
• Passwords stored as MD5 hashes

Why This Matters

MAZ Sound's community was made up of audio enthusiasts who signed up to rate and review sound equipment, an audience that, like most internet users, often reuses the same password across multiple accounts. Since the site shut down, there was never any breach notification or forced password reset, meaning any reused password from this dataset could still work on the same person's email, banking, or shopping accounts, opening the door to credential stuffing, account takeover, identity theft, and financial fraud.

How This Database Breach Became a Combolist

This incident is classified as both a database breach and a combolist. The 6,014 records were pulled directly from MAZ Sound's own database, most likely through a security flaw, and then reformatted into a combolist, a simple file pairing each email with its matching password. Combolists spread easily on hacking forums since running one against a list of popular websites takes no special skill, just automated login software and time.

Check If You Are Affected

If you were ever a member of MAZ Sound or reuse passwords across different sites, it is worth checking your exposure. HEROIC's free breach scanner searches a database of more than 400 billion leaked records to show you instantly whether your email address turns up in this breach or any other.