Have I Been Pwned: SoundCloud data breach impacts 29.8 million accounts

Recorded: Jan. 27, 2026, 4 p.m.

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HomeNewsSecurityHave I Been Pwned: SoundCloud data breach impacts 29.8 million accounts

Have I Been Pwned: SoundCloud data breach impacts 29.8 million accounts

By Sergiu Gatlan

January 27, 2026
07:25 AM
2

Hackers have stolen the personal and contact information belonging to over 29.8 million SoundCloud user accounts after breaching the audio streaming platform's systems.
SoundCloud was founded in 2007 as an artist-first platform that now provides access to over 400 million tracks from more than 40 million artists worldwide.
The company confirmed the breach on December 15, following widespread reports from users who were unable to access SoundCloud and saw 403 "Forbidden" errors when connecting via VPN.

SoundCloud told BleepingComputer at the time that it had activated its incident response procedures after detecting unauthorized activity involving an ancillary service dashboard.
"We understand that a purported threat actor group accessed certain limited data that we hold," SoundCloud said. "We have completed an investigation into the data that was impacted, and no sensitive data (such as financial or password data) has been accessed. The data involved consisted only of email addresses and information already visible on public SoundCloud profiles."
While SoundCloud didn't provide further details regarding the incident, BleepingComputer learned that the breach affected 20% of all SoundCloud users, roughly 28 million accounts based on publicly reported user figures (SoundCloud later published a security notice confirming the information provided by BleepingComputer's sources).
After the breach, BleepingComputer also learned that the ShinyHunters extortion gang was responsible for the attack, with sources saying that the threat group was also attempting to extort SoundCloud. This was confirmed by SoundCloud in a January 15 update, which said the threat actors had "made demands and deployed email flooding tactics to harass users, employees, and partners."
Although SoundCloud has yet to share how many users' data was stolen, data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned revealed the extent of the breach on Monday, reporting that it affected 29.8 million accounts whose email addresses, geographic locations, names, usernames, and profile statistics were harvested in the incident.
"In December 2025, SoundCloud announced it had discovered unauthorised activity on its platform. The incident allowed an attacker to map publicly available SoundCloud profile data to email addresses for approximately 20% of its users," said data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned.
"The impacted data included 30M unique email addresses, names, usernames, avatars, follower and following counts and, in some cases, the user's country. The attackers later attempted to extort SoundCloud before publicly releasing the data the following month."
BleepingComputer reached out to SoundCloud again today with questions about the December incident, but a response was not immediately available.
Last week, ShinyHunters also claimed responsibility for a wave of ongoing voice phishing attacks targeting single sign-on (SSO) accounts at Okta, Microsoft, and Google, which could enable attackers to breach corporate SaaS platforms and steal data for extortion.

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Data Breach
Extortion
Have I Been Pwned
Security Breach
ShinyHunters
SoundCloud

Sergiu Gatlan
Sergiu is a news reporter who has covered the latest cybersecurity and technology developments for over a decade. Email or Twitter DMs for tips.

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Comments

KuraBee - 11 hours ago

"The data involved consisted only of email addresses and information already visible on public SoundCloud profiles". So why is this breaking news? :)

b1k3rdude - 8 hours ago

Welp, people might want to change their credentials. And currently they cant.

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This BleepingComputer article details a significant data breach impacting SoundCloud, exposing the personal information of approximately 29.8 million users. The breach, initially detected in December 2025, was perpetrated by the threat actor group ShinyHunters, who gained unauthorized access to SoundCloud’s ancillary service dashboard. This access allowed them to map publicly available user profile data – including email addresses, geographic locations, names, usernames, follower/following counts, and profile statistics – to 30 million unique email addresses. Following the initial breach, ShinyHunters attempted extortion tactics targeting SoundCloud, employing email flooding to harass employees and partners. The Have I Been Pwned service confirmed the extent of the breach, highlighting the vulnerability of users’ data due to publicly accessible information on SoundCloud profiles. The incident underscores the risk associated with publicly available data and the potential for threat actors to exploit this information for malicious purposes, like extortion. While SoundCloud initially faced disruption to VPN access, the full scope of the data compromise was subsequently revealed, necessitating user scrutiny and potential password changes. The article highlights the importance of security awareness and vigilance among users and the need for platforms to maintain robust security measures to protect user data from unauthorized access. The ShinyHunters group’s subsequent extortion attempts further amplify the seriousness of the breach and the potential impact on affected individuals and the platform itself.