Bitcoin Talk Data Breach

What happened

In May 2015, the Bitcoin forum Bitcoin Talk was hacked and over 500k unique email addresses were exposed. The attack led to the exposure of a raft of personal data including usernames, email and IP addresses, genders, birth dates, security questions and MD5 hashes of their answers plus hashes of the passwords themselves.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Change your Bitcoin Talk password immediately, and update it anywhere you reused the same password.
• Enable two-factor authentication on the affected account and on your critical services (email, banking).
• Watch for targeted phishing emails referencing Bitcoin Talk — attackers weaponise breach data quickly.
• Exposed identity data raises identity-theft risk — consider credit monitoring or a credit freeze.
• Check whether your email address appears in this breach on haveibeenpwned.com.