imgur 2013 Data Breach
Hosting & Infrastructure / Hosting
imgur 2013 Data Breach
A hosting service in the hosting & infrastructure sector.
Confirmed · ObscureIQ Intelligence
Breach Risk Index i
17/100
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.
1.8MRecords
2013Year
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 September 2013, Imgur experienced a data breach, and the compromised data emerged over four years later in November 2017. Despite using SHA-256 hashes for passwords, the breach included plain text passwords, indicating that many original hashes had been cracked.
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…
1.8M records analyzed
About imgur
imgur is a hosting service in the hosting & infrastructure sector.
Why They Hold Your Data
imgur is a hosting service in the hosting & infrastructure sector. Services like this typically hold email addresses, passwords through account registration and normal operations.
Recent Developments
The imgur dataset circulated publicly; treat as part of the standing exposure landscape.
Data Points Exposed
2 verified field types
Email Address
Password High
Breach Impact
The exposure of credentials alongside personal data heightened account-takeover and reuse risk for imgur 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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