Your Password May Be Exposed: plymouth.ac.uk Leak Hit 513 Accounts

What HEROIC Analysts Found

In June 2026, HEROIC's threat intelligence team identified a combolist tied to plymouth.ac.uk after it was uploaded to Telegram by an individual user. The file contained 513 records pairing email addresses with plaintext passwords, along with the login URLs they were used with.

Why This Is Dangerous

Because these passwords were stored and shared in plaintext, anyone who downloads this file can read the password exactly as it was typed, with no cracking required. University accounts often connect to email, library systems, and financial aid portals, which makes a compromised login more valuable to an attacker than it might first appear.

What Was Exposed

• Email addresses
• Plaintext passwords
• Associated login URLs

Why This Matters

A leak of this size may look small, but the accounts inside are often reused across personal email, banking apps, and social media. Criminals load combolists like this one into automated tools that test the same email and password pair across other sites, a method called credential stuffing. Once one account falls, it can lead to account takeover, identity theft, or financial fraud.

How Combolists Work

A combolist pairs a username or email with a password, typically one pair per line in a plain text file. These lists are often assembled from smaller breaches, stealer malware, or scraped login pages, then shared or sold through Telegram channels and dark web forums. Because they require no technical skill to use, combolists remain one of the simplest tools behind everyday account takeovers.

Check If You Are Affected

HEROIC's free breach scanner checks your email address against a database of more than 400 billion breached records, including combolists like this one. If your information turns up, change that password right away and anywhere else you have used it.