Search Your Email: The PESGaming Breach Exposed 225,782 Accounts

HEROIC analysts identified this breach affecting PESGaming, a UK-based eGaming forum, originally dated January 2, 2016. The exposed dataset totals 225,782 user records, including email addresses, usernames, IP addresses, password salts, and MD5-salted password hashes, and it remains in circulation in credential collections used for automated account attacks.

Why This Is Dangerous

Search your email against this one. With over 225,000 accounts exposed, PESGaming is one of the larger breaches in its category, and its data has had a decade to spread across dark web forums and cracking tools. If you registered on this forum and reused that password anywhere else, the risk did not expire with time.

What Was Exposed

• Email addresses
• Usernames
• IP addresses
• Password hashes (MD5 with salt)
• Password salts

Why This Matters

A dataset this size gives attackers a large pool of credentials to run through automated login tools aimed at email providers, gaming platforms, and financial sites. MD5, even when salted, is a fast algorithm that modern hardware can crack at high volume, so a meaningful share of these passwords have likely already been recovered. Anyone who reused their PESGaming password elsewhere faces real risk of account takeover.

How This Database Breach Happened

This incident is classified as a database breach, meaning attackers gained direct access to the forum's backend rather than phishing individual members. That access is typically the result of an unpatched vulnerability, SQL injection, or a stolen administrator credential. Once inside, the full user table, including salts and password hashes, is copied out and later distributed across breach aggregation sites and dark web forums.

Check If You Are Affected

Search your email now and find out for certain. HEROIC's free breach scanner checks your address against a database of more than 400 billion leaked records, including this PESGaming breach, and tells you immediately if you were exposed. Run a free scan today.