dBforums Data Breach

What happened

In July 2016, a data breach of the now defunct database forum "dBforums" appeared for sale alongside several others hacked from the parent company, Penton. The breach of the vBulletin based forum contained 363k unique email addresses alongside usernames, IP addresses, dates of birth and salted MD5 password hashes.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Change your dBforums 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 dBforums — 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.