Mac Forums Data Breach

What happened

In July 2016, the self-proclaimed "Ultimate Source For Your Mac" website Mac Forums suffered a data breach. The vBulletin-based system exposed over 326k usernames, email and IP addresses, dates of birth and passwords stored as salted MD5 hashes. The data was later discovered being traded on a popular hacking forum. Mac Forums did not respond when contacted about the incident via their contact us form.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Change your Mac Forums 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 Mac Forums — 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.