imgur Data Breach (2013): What Was Exposed & What To Do

In September 2013, the online image sharing platform Imgur experienced a data breach affecting 1.7 million users. Email addresses and passwords from that incident later appeared in public circulation in November 2017. The breach is one of several older incidents whose data sets have resurfaced years after the original events, allowing later analysis of how the information was stored and protected.

What happened

Public records show that Imgur suffered unauthorized access in September 2013. The company reported the incident at the time, though details of the intrusion method and the full volume of data taken were not disclosed in available reporting.

A portion of the compromised records containing 1.7 million email addresses and passwords surfaced publicly in November 2017. The exposed set included plain-text passwords even though Imgur had stored user passwords as SHA-256 hashes. Imgur later stated that it migrated its password storage to bcrypt hashes in 2016.

How a breach like this happens

Incidents involving online services commonly begin with an attacker obtaining access to internal systems through vulnerabilities in web applications, weak authentication controls, or compromised administrative credentials. Once inside, an attacker can copy database tables that contain user account information.

When passwords are stored only as cryptographic hashes, attackers may attempt to recover the original values offline by testing large numbers of possible passwords against the hash values. If the hashing method in use at the time permits rapid testing, a portion of the passwords can be recovered and stored in plain text alongside the email addresses.

imgur and its sector

Imgur operates as a public image-hosting and sharing service used by individuals and websites to store and distribute photographs and graphics. Services of this type maintain user accounts primarily to manage uploads, track usage, and provide notification features.

Because these platforms require users to register with an email address and a password, they accumulate large collections of account credentials. A breach at such a service therefore places at risk the login information that many people reuse across other online accounts.

What data was at risk

The records that later appeared publicly contained email addresses and passwords. The presence of plain-text passwords in the 2017 data set indicates that the original SHA-256 hashes had been subjected to cracking attempts after the breach occurred.

Imgur has not published a complete inventory of every field that may have been taken in 2013. Other information commonly held by image-sharing services, such as usernames, upload histories, or IP addresses, remains unconfirmed in relation to this incident.

Why it matters

Email addresses paired with cracked passwords can be used in automated attempts to access other online accounts where the same credentials have been reused. Even when passwords are unique, the exposure of an email address increases the volume of phishing messages an individual may receive.

For the organization, older breaches that reappear in public data sets can prompt renewed scrutiny of password-storage practices and user-notification procedures long after the original event.

If your data was in this breach

Individuals can change the password on their Imgur account and on any other service where the same password or a close variation was used. Enabling two-factor authentication on accounts that support it adds a further control that does not rely solely on the password.

Readers may also submit their email address to a free public exposure scan to determine whether it appears in this or other known breach data sets. Monitoring for unusual login attempts or password-reset messages provides an ongoing way to detect misuse.

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