leaksear.ch has indexed 2,813 records from Sinister.ly, a hacking and technology forum, exposing account data including usernames, emails, IP addresses, dates of birth, password hashes, and salts (leaksear.ch metadata). Public reporting previously referenced a leaked Sinister.ly user database, while the breach date for this indexed dataset is not specified (leaksear.ch metadata) (krebsonsecurity.com).
What happened
Sinister.ly promoted itself in 2016 as a technology forum, formerly known as Anarchy Forums, created in August 2012, with discussion ranging from system security to graphic design and gaming (forumpromotion.net).
KrebsOnSecurity publicly referenced a compromised hacker-forum database and identified it as the leaked user database for sinister[dot]ly in a February 2017 report on LeakedSource (krebsonsecurity.com). The leaksear.ch indexing metadata confirms a Sinister.ly dataset with 2,813 indexed records, but does not identify the original breach method, threat actor, or breach date (leaksear.ch metadata).
What data was exposed
The indexed searchable fields are dates of birth, email addresses, hashed passwords, IP addresses, password salts, and usernames (leaksear.ch metadata).
Additional non-searchable record fields include profile and forum-account metadata such as avatar details, instant-messenger handles, buddy and ignore lists, registration and activity timestamps, last-IP fields, post counts, private-message counts and notification settings, referrals, reputation, signatures, time zone, usergroup, website, warning points, and other account preferences (leaksear.ch metadata).
Why this matters
Email addresses and usernames can support targeted phishing that references a user’s forum identity or security interests (leaksear.ch metadata). Hashed passwords and salts can still create credential risk if weak or reused passwords are cracked, so affected users should change reused passwords tied to the same email address (leaksear.ch metadata). IP addresses and activity-related account fields can help correlate pseudonymous forum accounts with networks, locations, or other online identities (leaksear.ch metadata). Dates of birth can make account-recovery abuse and identity-verification fraud more credible when combined with email and username data (leaksear.ch metadata).
Check your exposure
Request access to check this leak source, or sign in if you already have an account. You can search it by date of birth, email, hashed password, ip address, salt, and username.