The Stats Forever Breach Put 6,167 Stolen Passwords Online

On August 21, 2018, data from Stats Forever was published on a prominent hacking forum. Stats Forever was a U.S.-based information website focused on digital platforms, and the site has since shut down. The breach exposed 6,167 records, each containing an email address and a plaintext password. Plaintext passwords require no decryption and no cracking. The moment this file was posted, every credential in it was fully usable by anyone who downloaded it. For the 6,167 people in this dataset, their passwords were handed to strangers on the internet with no protection whatsoever.

Why This Is Dangerous

Plaintext password exposure is the most severe form of credential leak. There is no hash to crack, no algorithm to reverse, no time-consuming computation required. Attackers can take these email and password combinations and immediately begin testing them against other platforms where the same credentials may have been reused. Banking apps, email providers, social media accounts, and workplace systems are all potential targets. Because Stats Forever is now defunct, there is no company to send a breach notification, no password reset prompt, and no official warning. If you were in this database and never changed your password, it may still be in active use by threat actors today.

What Was Exposed

• Email Addresses
• Plaintext Passwords

Why This Matters

The fact that Stats Forever no longer exists does not reduce the risk to the people in this database. Stolen credentails do not expire. Once published on a hacking forum, data like this gets copied, aggregated into combolists, and redistributed across dozens of criminal marketplaces and private channels. Years after the original posting, these 6,167 records are almost certainly part of larger credential datasets being used in ongoing stuffing campaigns. People who used the same password on Stats Forever as they do on other services remain at direct risk right now, not just in 2018. The absence of a living company to notify makes this breach particulary difficult for victims to detect on their own.

How Database Breaches Work

A database breach typically begins with an attacker identifying a vulnerability in a web application, often through SQL injection, exposed administrative interfaces, or compromised server credentials. Once access is gained, the attacker queries the user database and extracts records directly. In the case of Stats Forever, the extracted data was then published on a hacking forum rather than sold privately, making it freely accessable to anyone who visited the post. Sites that store passwords in plaintext, as Stats Forever did, offer zero protection against this type of attack. A properly secured database would have stored password hashes using algorithms like bcrypt or Argon2, which require significant computational effort to crack. Plaintext storage means a single database theft yields immediately usable credentials.

Check If You Are Affected

HEROIC's free scanner searches your email address against a database of over 400 billion exposed records, including historical breaches like Stats Forever and the combolists they feed into. If you ever registered on Stats Forever or used the same email address across multiple sites, there is a real chance your credentials appear in this leak or one of the datasets it has been incorporated into. Scan free now to find out in seconds. If your email shows up, change every password you share with that account immediately and turn on two-factor authentication wherever available.