MySpace 2008 Data Breach
Platform · Social networking and content sharing · Legacy social media platform · Global
MySpace Breach (2008, Disclosed 2016): 359 Million User Accounts Including Plaintext Passwords Exposed
Social networking platform.
Confirmed · ObscureIQ Intelligence
Breach Risk Index i
25/100
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.
358.8MRecords
2008Year
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
MySpace, once the world's largest social network, suffered a data breach in 2008 that exposed roughly 358.8 million user accounts. The breach went undisclosed for approximately eight years before the stolen data appeared for sale in May 2016 on a dark web marketplace called "Real Deal," with a hacker known as "Peace" claiming responsibility. A server misconfiguration enabled direct access to user account data. MySpace confirmed the breach affected accounts created before June 11, 2013, the date it had upgraded its password security systems. The exposed data included email addresses, usernames, and passwords. The passwords were hashed using the outdated SHA-1 algorithm and were not properly salted, meaning only the first ten characters were protected and the hashes were relatively easy to crack. This made the dataset particularly dangerous for credential stuffing, where attackers reuse stolen login credentials to break into accounts on other platforms. Anyone who reused their MySpace password elsewhere was at heightened risk of account takeover across those services. The breach also carries long-tail risks: old profile data, social connections, and personal content associated with these accounts can resurface and cause reputational harm. MySpace's then-owner, Time Inc., launched an internal investigation after the data surfaced publicly in 2016 and responded by invalidating all affected passwords and urging users to reset credentials, particularly if reused on other sites. No significant regulatory action was publicly documented. For affected individuals, the primary ongoing risk is credential reuse across other accounts, identity linkage, and potential targeting through personal details tied to their old profiles.
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…
358.8M records analyzed
About MySpace
MySpace was one of the earliest mass-market social networking platforms and became a defining social media brand of the mid-2000s. Its legacy product combined user profiles, messaging, music, photos, and community interaction, and its current live site still presents itself as a place to “discover, share and connect with culture, creativity, sound, images and people.”
Why They Hold Your Data
Legacy social platforms collect user accounts, profile data, messages, photos, music or content activity, and historic social-relationship records tied to early social networking workflows.
Recent Developments
MySpace remains online, but in its present form it appears to function more as a culture and music-oriented legacy social property than as a major general-purpose social network. Its current public-facing site emphasizes music, artists, and discovery rather than the broad social networking posture that once defined the platform.
Data Points Exposed
3 verified field types
Email Address
Password High
Username
Breach Impact
The MySpace breach became one of the largest legacy social-media credential exposures ever made public. Have I Been Pwned says the incident affected about 359.4 million accounts and involved email addresses, usernames, and unsalted SHA-1 hashes of the first 10 characters of passwords, with the data later offered for sale in 2016. That combination made the dataset highly useful for credential stuffing, password cracking, account takeover attempts, and identity linkage across other services where users had reused login information.
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 social-platform breach: profile and contact-graph data supports impersonation, enrichment and social engineering. 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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