Breach Database / mail.ru Dump
Yes — mail.ru Dump was breached.
- 16.6 million accounts affected
- Breach occurred 2014-09-10 · mail.ru
- Unverified entry in the Have I Been Pwned catalog
What happened
In September 2014, several large dumps of user accounts appeared on the Russian Bitcoin Security Forum including one with nearly 5M email addresses and passwords, predominantly on the mail.ru domain. Whilst unlikely to be the result of a direct attack against mail.ru, the credentials were confirmed by many as legitimate for other services they had subscribed to. Further data allegedly valid for mail.ru and containing email addresses and plain text passwords was added in January 2018 bringing to total to more than 16M records. The incident was also then flagged as "unverified", a concept that was introduced after the initial data load in 2014.
What data was exposed
- Email addresses
- Passwords
What to do right now
- Change your password for this service now. And change it anywhere you reused the same password — attackers try leaked passwords on other sites within hours ("credential stuffing").
- Turn on two-factor authentication. Even a leaked password is useless against an account protected by a second factor. Prefer an authenticator app over SMS.
- Expect convincing phishing emails. Attackers use breached details to write personalized emails. Be suspicious of any message referencing this service.
- Check your other accounts on Have I Been Pwned. Your email address may appear in other breaches you don't know about yet.
- Monitor the apps you use going forward. Clearly watches the breach record for the companies behind your apps and alerts you the moment one appears.
Breach data from Have I Been Pwned. Listing here means the service appears in the public breach record — not that your personal data was affected.