Data breach

LiveJournal data breach

26,372,781 accounts · breached January 1, 2017

What happened

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.

Description by Have I Been Pwned

What data leaked

  • Email addresses
  • Passwords
  • Usernames

What to do if you had an account

  1. Change the password. Change your password on this service. If you used the same password anywhere else, change it there too: attackers try leaked email and password pairs on other sites automatically. A password manager makes one unique password per site practical.
  2. Turn on two-step sign-in. Enable two-factor authentication where the service offers it, preferably with an authenticator app or a passkey. A leaked password alone is then not enough to get in.
  3. Expect targeted phishing. Leaked contact details are used to write convincing fake messages that mention the breached company or your real name. Do not click links in unexpected emails or texts about this account; go to the site by typing its address.

Check your email at haveibeenpwned.com

We do not run email lookups ourselves. The search is done on haveibeenpwned.com, the service this list comes from.

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