Clash of Kings Data Breach (2016): What Was Exposed & What To Do

In July 2016, a data breach affected the forum associated with the game Clash of Kings, exposing records for 1.6 million subscribers. The incident involved usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, and passwords stored as MD5 hashes. The data later appeared in collections shared with Have I Been Pwned through dehashed.com and was reported publicly on July 14, 2016. The breach matters because it placed account credentials and contact details for a large number of users into circulation, creating ongoing risks of unauthorized account access and misuse of personal identifiers.

Breaking down the breach

The available records show that the breach occurred in July 2016 and involved the forum for Clash of Kings. It impacted 1.6 million user accounts. The exposed fields consisted of usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, and passwords stored as MD5 hashes. No further details on the method of access or the precise timing within the month have been disclosed in public reporting. The dataset was supplied to breach-tracking services by a third party, dehashed.com.

How a breach like this happens

Incidents affecting online forums commonly begin with unauthorized access to web servers or databases that store user account information. Attackers may exploit unpatched software, weak authentication controls, or stolen administrative credentials to reach these systems. Once inside, they can copy tables containing login details and associated metadata. The resulting files are sometimes later shared or sold on data-trading platforms, after which they surface in public breach repositories.

Clash of Kings and its sector

Clash of Kings is a mobile strategy game that maintains an associated online forum for player discussion and account management. Organizations in the online gaming sector routinely collect usernames, email addresses, and IP addresses to support account creation, moderation, and anti-abuse measures. Passwords are stored to enable login verification. A breach at such a service therefore touches the core account infrastructure used by players to access both the forum and, in many cases, linked game profiles.

The information in question

The breach record lists usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, and passwords stored as MD5 hashes. MD5 is a legacy hashing algorithm that does not incorporate modern safeguards such as salting or iteration, which can make reversal more feasible when computational resources are applied. No additional categories of data, such as payment details or full names, are named in the reported facts. The exact scope of any individual record beyond these fields remains unconfirmed.

Why it matters

For individuals whose information appeared in the dataset, the combination of email addresses and hashed passwords can facilitate attempts to access other online accounts that reuse the same credentials. IP addresses can contribute to location profiling or targeted follow-on activity. For the organization, the incident highlights the long-term exposure of user account data once it enters circulation in breach collections. The use of MD5 hashing increases the practical likelihood that some passwords can be recovered from the leaked material.

If your data was in this breach

Begin by changing the password for any Clash of Kings forum account and for any other service where the same password or a close variation was used. Enable multi-factor authentication wherever available. Monitor email accounts for unexpected login attempts or password-reset messages. Individuals can run a free exposure scan of their email address against known breach datasets to determine whether their information appears in this or other publicly tracked incidents.

AICompiled with AI assistance from public sources and published under our editorial standards.