medium severity August 12, 2012 · 1 min read

The Botting Network Data Breach (2012)

If you are a customer of The Botting Network, here’s what’s now in circulation.

In August 2012, the forum for making money with botting "The Botting Network" suffered a data breach that exposed 96k user records. The now defunct vBulletin forum leaked 96k email addresses, usernames, dates of birth and salted MD5 password hashes.

What the free scan actually returns

Sample resultyou@email.comIllustrative — not a real person

Found on people-search siteswe remove these

These listings are live, public, and legal to remove — and removing them is what we do.

value redacted in this sampleage, relatives, address historySpokeo

value redacted in this samplephone, household, property recordsBeenVerified

value redacted in this sample580 companies checked

Found in breach recordsverifiedreported — unverified

Each record is labeled: confirmed breach data, or an attacker’s claim no one has verified.

verifiedvalue redacted in this samplepassword + phone · 2024telecom breach

unverifiedvalue redacted in this sampleclaimed in ransomware listing · 2026leak-site claim

Leaked data cannot be deleted from the internet — anyone claiming otherwise is lying. Broker listings can be removed. We do the second, and show you exactly what to fix from the first.

Were you a The Botting Network customer?

The Botting Network is one listing. Your email is probably in others.

96K accounts were exposed here. Check whether yours is one — and find every other leak tied to the same address, in about 15 seconds. No account, no card.

Report details & sourcing

Severity Medium contact details only, none of them permanent

Disclosed August 12, 2012

Last reviewed July 22, 2026

Affected 96K

Data exposed Dates of birthEmail addressesPasswordsUsernames

By GalaxyWarden Threat Research · Editorial & sourcing standards

Editorial & sourcing policy

GalaxyWarden is a breach-monitoring service and news aggregator. We do not exfiltrate, host, purchase, or redistribute stolen data. Breach information is compiled from publicly accessible sources and threat-intelligence platforms, and is reported as claims attributed to their source. We promptly correct or remove material shown to be inaccurate — see our content & takedown policy or write to support@galaxywarden.com.

Sources: Have I Been Pwned

Related breaches

critical May 05, 2012