- BreachForums user database (323,988 records) leaked, exposing usernames, registration dates, and IP addresses
- Around 70,000 public IPs could help identify real users; most entries were useless loopback addresses
- Admin confirmed leak stemmed from August 2025 restoration; ShinyHunters denied involvement in hosting site
A massive leak has exposed the entire database of BreachForums, an underground hacking community, revealing usernames, IP addresses, and other sensitive information. The exact source and motive behind the leak remain unclear.
A site named after the ShinyHunters ransomware group has surfaced, hosting a 7Zip archive titled breachedforum.7z, which contains a database table with 323,988 member records, including display names, registration dates, IP addresses, and other internal data.
ShinyHunters Denies Involvement
While the leaked user accounts may not be significant for researchers or law enforcement, the IP addresses could be. Most of these IPs revert to a local loopback address (0x7F000009/127.0.0.9), as reported by BleepingComputer, indicating limited utility.
However, over 70,000 addresses do not correspond to the loopback IP and could potentially be used to identify real individuals behind the usernames.
The forum's administrator confirmed the breach, stating that a backup of the MyBB user database was temporarily exposed online and downloaded once. "This is not a recent incident. The data originates from an old users-table leak dating back to August 2025, during BreachForums' restoration from the .hn domain," they explained.
They added, "During the restoration process, the users table and the forum PGP key were briefly stored in an unsecured folder. Our investigation shows that the folder was downloaded only once during that time."
The identity of the data leaker remains a mystery. The ShinyHunters group has denied any connection to the website that was created in their name. Following a law enforcement raid last summer, the group claimed that BreachForums had become a honeypot set up by the police to trap hackers and cybercriminals.
