Dark Web Intel: Sirius Forum Leak Exposed 7,202 Accounts

HEROIC analysts identified the Sirius Forum breach, an incident dating back to January 1, 2015, that exposed 7,202 records tied to the general discussion forum. The compromised data included email addresses, usernames, and passwords hashed with bcrypt.

Why Bcrypt Hashing Limits the Damage, But Doesn't Eliminate It

Unlike many older breaches involving MD5 or plaintext passwords, this one used bcrypt, a hashing method specifically designed to be slow and computationally expensive to crack. That's good news: mass-cracking bcrypt hashes is far harder and slower than cracking weaker formats. It's not a guarantee of safety, though. Very weak or extremely common passwords can still eventually be cracked, and the email and username exposed alongside the hashes are still fully readable on their own.

What Was Exposed in the Sirius Forum Breach

• Email addresses
• Usernames
• Bcrypt-hashed passwords

Why This Still Matters Even With Stronger Password Protection

Even with bcrypt in place, your email address and username are exposed either way, and that combination alone is useful to attackers building phishing lists or testing accounts across other services. If your forum password happened to be weak or something you've used elsewhere, it's still worth treating as compromised. Credential stuffing, account takeover, and identity theft remain possible outcomes any time an email and password pairing becomes public, regardless of how well the password itself was protected.

How a Database Breach Like This Happens

A database breach occurs when an attacker gains unauthorized access to the system storing a website's user records, often through an unpatched vulnerability, a misconfigured server, or stolen administrator credentials. Once inside, the attacker can extract the full user table, including emails, usernames, and password hashes, in a single operation. Even forums that follow good password security practices, like using bcrypt, can still be breached if other parts of their infrastructure are left exposed.

Check If Your Email Was Exposed in This or Any Other Breach

Don't leave it to chance. HEROIC's free breach scanner checks your email against a database of more than 400 billion leaked records, including this Sirius Forum breach, and tells you immediately if you're affected. If you find a match, update that password if you've reused it anywhere and turn on multi-factor authentication wherever it's available. Scan now to check your exposure.