Inside the SoundCloud Leak: How 850 Plaintext Passwords Got Exposed

HEROIC analysts identified a database breach tied to SoundCloud, dated September 6, 2015. The breach exposed 850 accounts, pairing email addresses directly with plaintext passwords.

Why This Is Dangerous

Plaintext passwords mean an attacker does not need to crack or guess anything, the login is sitting there in readable form. For each of the 850 accounts in this leak, that means immediate access to SoundCloud, and potentially to any other account where the same password was reused.

What Was Exposed

• Email addresses
• Plaintext passwords

Why This Matters

A SoundCloud account might not seem like a high-value target, but a compromised account can still be used to send malicious links to followers, post unauthorized content, or serve as a stepping stone if the same password unlocks an email or banking account elsewhere. Attackers routinely take leaked email and password pairs and run them through automated credential stuffing tools, checking each one against dozens of other services in search of a working match.

How Database Breaches Like This Happen

This incident is classified as a database breach, meaning attackers accessed SoundCloud's backend directly and extracted a set of account records rather than targeting individual users one at a time. Storing passwords in plaintext instead of hashing them is a significant security gap, because it means every password becomes instantly usable the moment the underlying data is exposed, with no additional cracking effort required.

Check If You Are Affected

If you have a SoundCloud account, or reused a password from around 2015 anywhere else, it is worth checking your exposure. HEROIC's free breach scanner searches a database of more than 400 billion breached records to tell you instantly if your email address has been compromised.