Have I Been Pwned

We were recently travelling to faraway lands, doing meet and greets with gov partners, when one of them posed an interesting idea: What if people from our part of the world could see a link through to our local resource on data breaches provided by the gov? Initially, I was sceptical, primarily because no matter where you are in the world, isn't the guidance the same? Strong and unique passwords, turn on MFA, and so on and so forth. But our host explained the suggestion, which in retrospect ma...

I'm often asked if cyber criminals are getting better at impersonating legitimate organisations in order to sneak their phishing attacks through. Yes, they absolutely are, but I also argue that the inverse is true too: legitimate organisations frequently communicate in ways that are indistinguishable from a phishing attack! I can name countless examples of banks, delivery services and even government agencies sending communication that I was convinced was a phish, but turned out to be legit. I o...

If I'm honest, I was never that keen on a merch store for Have I Been Pwned. It doesn't make the code run faster, nor does it load any more data breaches or add any useful features to the service whatsoever. But... people were keen. They wanted swag they could wear or drink from or whatever, and it's actually pretty cool that there's excitement about HIBP as a brand. Plus, setting up a merch store is easy, right? To cut to the chase, we set up a store on Teespring and they've been an absolute b...

One of the greatest fears we all have in the wake of a data breach is having our identity stolen. Nefarious parties gather our personal information exposed in the breach, approach financial institutions and then impersonate us to do stuff like this: So I recently somewhat had my identity stolen, someone used my driver's license to open about 10 different bank accounts across 6 Banks. This was the message I received from a friend of mine just last week, and he was in a real mess. The bad guys h...

As we gradually roll out HIBP’s Partner Program, we’re aiming to deliver targeted solutions that bridge the gap between being at risk and being protected. HIBP is the perfect place to bring these solutions to the forefront, as it's often the point at which individuals and organisations first learn of their exposure in data breaches. The challenge for corporates, in particular, is especially significant as they're tasked with protecting entire workforces, often against highly motivated and sophis...

I always used to joke that when people used Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), we effectively said "Oh no - you've been pwned! Uh, good luck!" and left it at that. That was fine when it was a pet project used by people who live in a similar world to me, but it didn't do a lot for the everyday folks just learning about the scary world of data breaches. Partnering with 1Password in 2018 helped, but the impact of data breaches goes well beyond the exposure of passwords, so a couple of months ago, I wrote ab...

This has been a very long time coming, but finally, after a marathon effort, the brand new Have I Been Pwned website is now live! Feb last year is when I made the first commit to the public repo for the rebranded service, and we soft-launched the new brand in March of this year. Over the course of this time, we've completely rebuilt the website, changed the functionality of pretty much every web page, added a heap of new features, and today, we're even launching a merch store 😎 Let me talk...

For many years, people would come to Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), run a search on their email address, get the big red "Oh no - pwned!" response and then... I'm not sure. We really didn't have much guidance until we partnered with 1Password and started giving specific advice about how to secure your digital life. So, that's passwords sorted, but the impact of data breaches goes well beyond passwords alone... There are many different ways people are impacted by breaches, for example, identity fraud...

I love a good road trip. Always have, but particularly during COVID when international options were somewhat limited, one road trip ended up, well, "extensive". I also love the recent trips Charlotte and I have taken to spend time with many of the great agencies we've worked with over the years, including the FBI, CISA, CCCS, RCMP, NCA, NCSC UK and NCSC Ireland. So, that's what we're going to do next month across some very cool locations in Europe: Whilst the route isn't set in stone, we'll...

Today, we're happy to welcome the Gambia National CSIRT to Have I Been Pwned as the 38th government to be onboarded with full and free access to their government domains. We've been offering this service for seven years now, and it enables national CSIRTs to gain greater visibility into the impact of data breaches on their respective nations. Our goal at HIBP remains very straightforward: to do good things with data breaches after bad things happen. We hope this initiative helps support the Gam...