The Heritage Foundation data breach: 72K accounts exposed
Severity: high · Patch status: no-fix-needed · Since 2024-07-10
In July 2024, hacktivists published almost 2GB of data taken from The Heritage Foundation and their media arm, The Daily Signal. The data contained 72k unique email addresses, primarily used for commenting on articles (along with names, IP addresses and the comments left) and by content contributors (along with usernames and passwords stored as either MD5 or phpass hashes). Exposed data: email addresses, ip addresses, names, passwords, usernames. The breach dates from Jul 9, 2024; Have I Been Pwned loaded it on Jul 10, 2024.
What to do
- If you had a The Heritage Foundation 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