Verifications.io data breach: 763.1M accounts exposed
Severity: high · Patch status: no-fix-needed · Since 2019-03-09
In February 2019, the email address validation service verifications.io suffered a data breach. Discovered by Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia, the breach was due to the data being stored in a MongoDB instance left publicly facing without a password and resulted in 763 million unique email addresses being exposed. Many records within the data also included additional personal attributes such as names, phone numbers, IP addresses, dates of birth and genders. No passwords were included in the data. The Verifications.io website went offline during the disclosure process, although an archived copy remains viewable. Exposed data: dates of birth, email addresses, employers, genders, geographic locations, ip addresses, job titles, names, phone numbers, physical addresses. The breach dates from Feb 25, 2019; Have I Been Pwned loaded it on Mar 9, 2019.
What to do
- If you had a Verifications.io 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
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