LiveJournal data breach: 26.4M accounts exposed
Severity: high · Patch status: no-fix-needed · Since 2020-05-26
In mid-2019, news broke of an alleged LiveJournal data breach. This followed multiple reports of credential abuse against Dreamwidth beginning in 2018, a fork of LiveJournal with a significant crossover in user base. The breach allegedly dates back to 2017 and contains 26M unique usernames and email addresses (both of which have been confirmed to exist on LiveJournal) alongside plain text passwords. An archive of the data was subsequently shared on a popular hacking forum in May 2020 and redistributed broadly. Exposed data: email addresses, passwords, usernames. The breach dates from Jan 1, 2017; Have I Been Pwned loaded it on May 26, 2020.
What to do
- If you had a LiveJournal account, change its password and the password of any other account that reused it.
- Turn on multi-factor authentication wherever it is offered.
- Check whether your addresses are in this breach at https://haveibeenpwned.com.
- Expect targeted phishing that quotes the leaked details; verify any unexpected contact out of band.
Sources
All live incidents on Threat Watch