MyRecon OSINT
Genesis Market
On 5 April 2023, Genesis Market was breached. 8,000,000 accounts were exposed, including browser user agent details, credit card cvv, credit cards. MyRecon rates it 76/100 — severe. That is about 30% of the population of Australia.
What happened
In April 2023, the stolen identity marketplace Genesis Market was shut down by the FBI and a coalition of law enforcement agencies across the globe in "Operation Cookie Monster". The service traded in "browser fingerprints" which enabled criminals to impersonate victims and access their online services. As many of the impacted accounts did not include email addresses, "8M" is merely an approximation intended to indicate scale. Other personal data compromised by the service included names, addresses and credit card information, although not all individuals had each of these fields exposed.
Breach description from Have I Been Pwned, used under a CC BY 4.0 licence.
Who was behind it
No party has been publicly confirmed as responsible, and this page will not name one. Most breaches are never formally attributed: data surfaces on a forum or inside a combined dump long after the intrusion, and the trail back to a specific actor is rarely made public. Where a group has claimed responsibility it is usually named in the account above — that claim is theirs, not a finding of ours.
What was exposed, and why it matters
- Browser user agent detailsAdds detail to a profile that can be assembled from several breaches at once.
- Credit card CVVAdds detail to a profile that can be assembled from several breaches at once.
- Credit cardsDirectly spendable until the card is cancelled, and card numbers circulate for years after a breach.
- Dates of birthOne of the three things call centres ask to verify identity, and it never changes.
- Email addressesThe address becomes a confirmed, active target — expect more phishing, better aimed.
- NamesTurns an anonymous address into an identified person, which is what makes targeted phishing possible.
- PasswordsAnyone reusing this password elsewhere has those accounts exposed too — credential stuffing is automated and tries them all within days.
- Phone numbersEnables SIM-swap attacks against SMS two-factor codes, and puts the number on scam-call lists indefinitely.
- Physical addressesWhere someone actually lives. Combined with a name this moves the risk off the internet.
- UsernamesA handle links this account to every other place the same handle is used.
What to do if you were in it
- Change this password anywhere you reused it, starting with your email account — that is the one that can reset all the others.
- Move two-factor authentication off SMS and onto an authenticator app, which a SIM swap cannot intercept.
- Check statements for the months after the breach date and ask your bank for a replacement card if the number was full.
- Be sceptical of post and callers who already know your address — knowing it is no longer evidence of anything.
- Expect better-aimed phishing. A message that already knows your name and where you have an account is the whole point of a breach like this.
Questions people ask about this breach
Was my email address in the Genesis Market breach?
Enter it in the box at the top of this page. MyRecon checks it against this breach and every other one on record, and the address is never stored.
What data was leaked in the Genesis Market breach?
browser user agent details, credit card cvv, credit cards, dates of birth, email addresses, names, passwords, phone numbers, physical addresses, usernames. Each one is explained above, along with what it means for the person it belongs to.
When did it happen, and when did it become public?
The breach is dated 5 April 2023. It was published to Have I Been Pwned on 5 April 2023.
Is the Genesis Market breach real?
Yes. Have I Been Pwned lists it as verified, meaning the data was checked against the source rather than taken on trust.
How many people were affected?
8,000,000 accounts. That is about 30% of the population of Australia. That is accounts rather than people — one person often has several.
Read next
Also in the archive
Severity is scored by MyRecon from the number of accounts, the sensitivity of the specific fields exposed, and whether the breach is confirmed — not by a language model. The description above is quoted from Have I Been Pwned; the analysis around it is ours.