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HongFire, ueber18 and others fall victim of data leaks.

06 June 2021
BREACHAWARE HQ
Anime

A total of 12 breach events were found and analysed resulting in 2,525,653 exposed accounts containing a total of 11 different data types of personal datum . The breaches found publicly and freely available included HongFire, ueber18, Utair, Powerbot and GameOgre. Sign in to view the full library of breach events which includes, where available, reference articles relating to each breach.

Categories of Personal Data Discovered

Contact Data, Technical Data, Locational Data, Socia-Demographic Data, Financial Data, Behavioural Data.

Data Breach Analysis

Each of these breached entities reflects a different corner of the online ecosystem, from niche forums and adult content communities to commercial airlines and gaming platforms. The variety not only illustrates the extent to which digital services collect and store personal information but also the diversity in threat surface across different sectors.

HongFire was a well-known online community centred around Japanese pop culture, particularly anime, manga, and adult-themed games. Though no longer active, its data footprint remains in breach archives. While some may consider this information low-risk, accounts tied to pseudonymous identities often overlap with other, more official services. If email reuse or password reuse was a factor, the fallout could be more significant. Moreover, the association with adult or fringe content raises privacy concerns even if the data is somewhat dated.

The breach of ueber18, an adult website, introduces another layer of sensitivity. Breaches involving adult content platforms often result in reputational damage for individuals whose data is exposed. When adult services are involved, even seemingly innocuous data can carry an elevated risk of blackmail, harassment, or social fallout, especially in jurisdictions or cultures where privacy is heavily guarded around such topics.

Utair, a Russian airline, represents a more traditional commercial entity among this group. The exposure of data from an airline, even in moderate volumes, has significant implications. The aviation industry, by its nature, collects a considerable amount of regulated personal information to facilitate bookings, security screening, and customer service. A data breach in this sector can affect not only customers but also operational integrity, especially if booking systems or travel itineraries are tied to exposed user records.

Powerbot is a community and marketplace that grew around automation tools for RuneScape, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Communities like this, often existing in a legal grey area, still accumulate significant amounts of personal data. Users in such communities often operate under aliases, but with email accounts and reuse of credentials, these identities can be tied back to real-world personas, increasing the scope of potential harm.

GameOgre is a smaller gaming site focused on reviews, discussions, and community content related to online and indie games. While not a major platform, breaches of forums and niche sites like this are common sources of credential stuffing data. These platforms often have limited cybersecurity resources, making them frequent targets for attackers and easy entry points for aggregators of leaked credentials.

The presence of 11 distinct data types across these breaches adds another layer of complexity. While some of these elements may appear trivial in isolation, when combined, they create detailed user profiles. In the hands of malicious actors, this information can be used for phishing, account hijacking, blackmail, or social engineering. The concern is not always about the individual platform’s value, but about how each piece of data can be combined with others from unrelated breaches to increase its utility.

Another point of concern is the persistence of this data. Although some of these platforms, like HongFire or Powerbot, are no longer active or widely used, the data associated with them remains in circulation. Old data doesn’t simply fade away; it persists in dark web markets, private archives, and breach forums. Even outdated user records can lead to account takeovers if password reuse is involved, or they can simply be used to enrich larger data aggregation tools used by threat actors.

Moreover, the inclusion of adult content platforms and commercial entities like an airline in the same data set creates complex intersections of reputational, regulatory, and personal risks. For instance, if a user’s email appears in both an adult content platform and an airline customer list, that cross-contextual linkage might be enough to piece together a partial identity, making further attacks or profiling easier.

In total, while the number of affected accounts in this analysis, just over 2.5 million, is modest compared to some larger events, the diversity of data and contexts makes this set particularly nuanced. It reflects a common reality in the modern threat landscape: data exposure is not always about volume, but about sensitivity, variety, and interconnectivity.

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