Severity, Source Types

📶 Severity Overview

SpyCloud applies a normalized severity to each record in our dataset to help analysts quickly assess risk and relevance.

These scores are assigned during parsing based on multiple attributes including:

Source type (malware, breach, combolist, etc.)
Data fidelity (plaintext vs hashed credentials)
Presence of behavioral indicators (e.g., session cookies, malware log context)

🧠Why It Matters

Severity helps triage results — not all credentials are equally dangerous.
A credential from an infostealer-infected machine 25 carries far more risk than one from a recycled combolist 20.

📊 Severity Table

Severity	Meaning
2	Email only - typically from a breach or phishing target list
5	Informational - could contain sensitive data, but no plaintext password
20	Credential with plaintext password, could contain sensitive data.
25	Malware log with credentials, infected machine info, and/or behavioral signals
26	Session cookie data taken from a device infected by malware

📚 Source Types

SpyCloud data spans multiple source types:

Breach – Verified datasets from compromised organizations
Combolist – Aggregated credential pairs with unknown or mixed sources
Malware – Logs from infostealer-infected machines
Phishing – Kits and email harvesting data
Scraped / Exposed – Publicly accessible or misconfigured datasets

⚠️Sensitive Source Handling

Some datasets may be flagged as sensitive due to legal, geopolitical, or proprietary reasons.
These are still searchable but may have access or export controls.

Government domains
Law enforcement targets
Privately obtained HUMINT