AnimeForum.ru Data Breach
The December 2017 AnimeForum.ru data breach occurred when unauthorized threat actors breached the forum infrastructure of AnimeForum.ru (animeforum.ru), one of the prominent and longest-standing Russian-language online communities dedicated to anime, manga, cosplay, and Japanese pop culture.
Exposed Data Types
4- Email addresses
- Usernames
- IP addresses
- Dates of birth
About This Breach
The compromise resulted in an unauthorized SQL database export of the community's Invision Power Board (IPB) member table (an_members), which subsequently circulated across cybersecurity repositories and credential monitoring databases.
What information was affected in the AnimeForum.ru incident?
The leaked forum export contains complete membership profiles across the enthusiast community. The incident compromised 132,515 unique user accounts, exposing the following categories of personal information:
- Account Identifiers: Community usernames (name), member group identifiers, and forum rank titles.
- Contact Credentials: Canonical email addresses.
- Network Identifiers: Registration and activity IP addresses.
- Demographic Details: Registered birth dates (day, month, and year).
- Temporal Metadata: Account registration timestamps (joined) and forum participation metrics.
How many accounts were affected?
Rigorous deduplication and RFC canonical verification confirmed 132,515 unique canonical email addresses across the database dump.
Technical analysis and security risks
The incident involved an unauthorized export of the IPB core member roster. The exposed email addresses, usernames, and birth dates can support targeted phishing and account matching across services such as Steam, Discord, and VKontakte. Passwords are not among the fields listed in this record, so these data alone do not establish password exposure or enable credential stuffing. Accounts using a password reused elsewhere may still be at risk if that password has been exposed in a separate incident.
Recommended actions for affected users
Users who maintained accounts on AnimeForum.ru should:
- Immediately change passwords on any existing accounts where their forum password was reused.
- Implement unique, strong passwords managed by a credential manager for each digital account.
- Activate multi-factor authentication (MFA / 2FA) across personal email and digital entertainment platforms.
Verification and editorial method
LeakData compares the incident name, date, affected-record count, and exposed data types with accessible sources. Unverified fields are not presented as facts, and records are updated when new evidence becomes available.
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