Wattpad data breach: 268.8M accounts exposed
Severity: critical · Patch status: no-fix-needed · Since 2020-07-19
In June 2020, the user-generated stories website Wattpad suffered a huge data breach that exposed almost 270 million records. The data was initially sold then published on a public hacking forum where it was broadly shared. The incident exposed extensive personal information including names and usernames, email and IP addresses, genders, birth dates and passwords stored as bcrypt hashes. Exposed data: bios, dates of birth, email addresses, genders, geographic locations, ip addresses, names, passwords, social media profiles, user website urls, usernames. The breach dates from Jun 29, 2020; Have I Been Pwned loaded it on Jul 19, 2020.
What to do
- If you had a Wattpad 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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