Dota2 2016 Data Breach
Gaming / Video Games
Dota2 2016 Data Breach
A video games service in the gaming sector.
Confirmed · ObscureIQ Intelligence
Breach Risk Index i
8/100
Lower riskHigher risk
Lower: limited current risk based on data value and recency.
Data Sensitivity i
StandardExposed data is largely lower-sensitivity. Standard identity-protection precautions are advised.
1.9MRecords
2016Year
The Breach Risk Index (BRI) is a proprietary 0–100 score rating how dangerous a breach is right now, based on how recently the data has been circulating on the dark web and how valuable it is to attackers.
Breach Summary
In July 2016, the Dota2 official developers forum suffered a data breach that exposed almost 2 million users. The hack of the vBulletin forum led to the disclosure of email and IP addresses, usernames and passwords stored as salted MD5 hashes.
Full threat analysis, exploitation vectors, and principal guidance below.
10 additional sections · verified field analysis · defensive doctrine
Querying breach corpus…
Cross-referencing exposed field types…
Resolving threat-actor attribution…
Compiling principal risk advisory…
1.9M records analyzed
About Dota2
Dota2 is a video games service in the gaming sector.
Why They Hold Your Data
Dota2 is a video games service in the gaming sector. Services like this typically hold email addresses, IP addresses, passwords, usernames through account registration and normal operations.
Recent Developments
The Dota2 dataset circulated publicly; treat as part of the standing exposure landscape.
Data Points Exposed
4 verified field types
Email Address
IP Address
Password High
Username
Breach Impact
The exposure of credentials alongside personal data heightened account-takeover and reuse risk for Dota2 users and drew scrutiny of its data protection.
Exploitation & Downstream Threats
• Credential stuffing against reused passwords across other platforms | • Targeted phishing campaigns using exposed email addresses
Principal Risk Advisory
What this means for a principal
A consumer-service breach: contact and account data supports phishing, account takeover and profile enrichment. For a high-profile principal the main risk is credible impersonation and enrichment of existing exposure.
What You Should Do
- Reset any reused passwords and enable MFA on email first, then financial accounts.
- Do not use unofficial 'am I affected' lookups; several are themselves harvesting operations.
How ObscureIQ Can Help
- Corpus confirmation: determine whether and where the principal (plus household and staff) appear in this dataset and which specific fields are exposed for them.
- Exposure mapping: cross-reference the exposed identifiers against broker-available data to size and prioritize the principal's wider footprint.
- ThreatWatch tuned to this incident's identifiers and misuse pattern (impersonation and targeting patterns, not generic credential monitoring).
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