Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> While the specifics of the data breach remain unclear, the trove of data was put up for sale on the dark web for $3.5 million in April, the complaint reads.

I guess they failed to sell it because links to the leaked data on usdod.io have been available on Breachforum/Leakbase for over a week now. Someone created a magnet link yesterday and it's fully seeded so speeds are fast.

The data in the breach is irreversibly public now.



> Someone created a magnet link yesterday

Are you against simply sharing the infohash here? I'd like to download the leak to see what information it has on myself and my family, but I don't really relish the idea of signing up for a breachforums account and sifting though its posts if I can avoid it.


Here is a strongly encrypted base64 version to keep hackers out:

bWFnbmV0Oj94dD11cm46YnRpaDozY2FhNzFmM2VjOGNiY2NjNmZjYTRmZWI3MTg1ZGEyYmFiMTQ5YmE3JmRuPU5QRCZ0cj11ZHA6Ly90cmFja2VyLm9wZW5iaXR0b3JyZW50LmNvbTo4MCZ0cj11ZHA6Ly90cmFja2VyLm9wZW50cmFja3Iub3JnOjEzMzcvYW5ub3VuY2U=

Allegedly, the password (also base64 encrypted) is:

aHR0cHM6Ly91c2RvZC5pby8=


Has anyone been able to reverse this base64 encryption? Whatever am I going to do with this?


It can't be reversed, unfortunately. base64 has been peer proven as mathematically unhackable.


Username checks out.


Same for base16. That's why those pesky hash digests always use it.


rot13 is way faster though.


do you still hang out with CrashOverRide?


Only in phonebooths during slow-motion, rotating hack montages.


https://www.base64decode.org/

I hope this helps you


It was a joke, but thank you. The internet needs more helpful people.


Wasn't it a joke?


I just knew someone was going to take it seriously xD


[flagged]


I'm not sure. There are 64 bases. Probably quantum proof.


[flagged]


[flagged]


Sincerely I hope you don’t try reading Jonathan Swift - you may start trying to eat children.


Yeah ok I was stupid


Dude it's just a joke


Yeah I'm dumb and was having a bad day


Happens to the best of us. Life is a dance not a maze.


I dug into this a little and one of the files is 164GB. How do you even work with these files? That is, how would I search for my SSN on my windows box?


That's not even that big? `cat big_file | grep -v my_term` would go line-by-line and show any lines matching your query. If you're doing a lot of queries, you'd probably want to index it, so you throw it into a sqlite database with the usual SQL utils.

Edit: I missed you said Windows. Probably Powershell have similar utilities, so you can do `ReadFileLineByLine \r \d big_file | ReturnHitBySearchTerm \v \t \s my_term` or something similar.


You absolutely do not want to use "-v" with that grep.

Nor do you want to use cat (UUoCA) but that's very much a minor point in comparison.


UUoCA: https://porkmail.org/era/unix/award

I hadn't heard of it before.


Using sift on a 100GB txt file still takes multiple minutes. I haven't tried ag, but grep is supposedly slower.


If the desire is just to grep for your name, email address, whatever, and then throw the rest of the data away, I don't think waiting multiple minutes is a big deal.


I can't believe HN mods think it's ok to leave this comment up. I don't know of a way to report it myself unfortunately.


Excuse me, why is linking to something bad? Especially when it contains your own data?



Doxxing involves targeting an individual, as mentioned in the first line of that wiki page.

I'm not publishing or leaking any data either. I'm linking to something that was already made public which contains my own data.


Linking to personal information may be considered publishing in some areas.

Also it's just a really crappy thing to do IMO.


I get it now, but I have so much imposter syndrome that I wasn't sure if this was ACTUALLY something I needed to figure out -__-


Anyone know the size after the 50GB file is un7zipped?

EDIT: answer: 2 files, 176GB and 120GB, total is 298GB.


Entire family is in the list, with every address they've lived at in the last 40 years.

Freeze your credit reports, folks.


Elsewhere in this thread I posted a detailed commentary on what the torrent contains.


FYI: This is only the two social security files, not the whole breach.


BitTorrent uses something called a "distributed hash table", for which there exist services to search it (btdig, etc). You can use one of those alongside the torrent name (NPD) to find it.

I haven't downloaded it, but my understanding is that the data comes compressed and with a (weak) password.


You can check to see if you were in the breach here:

https://npd.pentester.com/search

This will save you the effort of a 30min search per `grep` on the original breached files.


fyi that is likely to be a crime, at the very least has been cases of websites being punished for linking to illegally distributed IP (even if not hosting it).


I'd be worried about legal repercussions if we were talking about the latest Disney movie, but this is merely the private information of a billion people. Never seen IP law give much of a crap about that before.


Private information on people is Equifax's IP.


A collection of facts is not and can not be copyrightable, especially when it was mechanically derived/collected (no human creativity). So, no, it is absolutely not "Equifax's IP".


Only in the US. In the EU and other jurisdictions is does have protection [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_European_...


So I could copyright my SSN in the EU and sue Equifax et al.?


Not on an individual basis. If you collected a large number of them and someone copied them from you, then you could have a database right claim, which is sort of similar to copyright, but much less powerful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right


Yeah, in the EU it does have Palantir's protection. /s


which has yet to leak. as far as we know, the equifax data never became public.


1 pirated Disney movie is a tragedy.

3,000,000,000 leaked Social Security Numbers is a statistic.

-Joseph "Social Credit" Stalin

...Is it obvious I, as an American who can confirm my SSN (and whatever else) was leaked by this, sincerely couldn't care less because this is leak incident number 897165176548795647564576415671?

That $10 UberEats gift card from CrowdStrike would be more valuable than another batch of Free Credit Monitoring(tm).


UberEats gift cards are the ultimate passive aggressive “fuck you”. To use them, you need to spend at least another 10 to actually get something


Is this NPD's "IP" though? Is my personal information that company scraped, now that company's intellectual property?


Where's the IP?

It's like phone books--a collection of data, no creative content.


Do you know if the Rhysida ones get torrented?

https://www.ransomlook.io/group/rhysida


Nobody's gonna pay that much money for it when you can get it from ad companies for pennies


Now everyone just needs to send their email addresses to HIBP, i.e., email HIBP, so he can connect these identities with IP addresses and working email accounts. For peoples' protection of course.

After everyone "has been pwned" then there is no need for HIBP. The answer is always "yes". Yet I am certain sites like "HIBP" will never go away. Something about email marketing.

Some HN commenter(s) will inevitably try to defend HIBP. But this comment also refers to sites "like HIBP" that use data breach dumps opportunistically to generate web traffic, collect IP and email addresses. Some folks just do not see what is wrong with the idea.


There is trust involved here. And people trust Troy Hunt.

And of course you can download SHA ranges and do lookup offline: https://www.troyhunt.com/ive-just-launched-pwned-passwords-v...

He even previously encouraged to download via torrent, but now it seems there is a custom tool to download that data.


The offline lookup is just for passwords (the pwned passwords service) and is used to prevent people from using known breached passwords.

There is no offline availability for the Have I Been Pwned data on which emails were present in which breaches. Access to thus data is rate limited and paid API keys are needed for bulk access.


The downloads are the way to go IMHO. But this is coming a little too late. "HIBP" is already making money from "paid API" and other commercial nonsense. Profiting from data breaches. While posing as a hero, catering to a dedicated following. This is, IMHO, everything that is wrong with the web.

The issue I am raising is not whether a particular website operator claiming to be in posession of data breach dumps, that any web user can download themselves, is "trustworthy" or not. The point I am raising is the unnecessary data collection. If these downloads were available from the website from day one, then there would be no "paid API" nor partnerships with so-called "tech" companies or HN HIBP following. There would not be "HIBP" proponents trying to suppress any criticism of it, defending its every move despite its past mistakes. Most importantly, there would less/no need for "trust".

HIBP is a particularly ugly symbol of the problem of web intermediaries/middlemen and everything/anything "as a service". As expected, HN commenters will not like this viewpoint as they may themselves be trying to profit from such intermediation and the data collection it enables. They may have even convinced themselves they are doing good.


He actually tried to sell the company at one point in time. He got a stressfull time, approaching burn out. Around 2019 he tried to sell HIBP: https://www.troyhunt.com/project-svalbard-the-future-of-have...

> ... but it was the first time since the overhead of managing the service had gone off the charts.

Around 2020 he decided not to: https://www.troyhunt.com/project-svalbard-have-i-been-pwned-...

He then reveals source of stress and the way it impacted HIBP: https://www.troyhunt.com/sustaining-performance-under-extrem...

Just think about it: HIBP hinges on a person doing his stuff, putting in his time and finances. That affects personal life. However that is a very valuable utility that guy is doing. Good that CF donates cache and help is here and there... but do you think you would have managed that service better?

Would it have been better if HIBP was sold and managed by a real company? Who knows. But long term it is of course healthier if HIBP isn't affected by a single person personal life situations.


HIBP has been audited by independent 3rd parties.


> After everyone "has been pwned" then there is no need for HIBP.

You can be repeatedly pwned with updated/different information. It is not a one and done thing.


And people are born and die


Allegedly /s


Using data breach dumps to get web traffic and IP/email addresses under the guise of "helping" is lame. Then partnering with so-called "tech" companies that collect data as a "business". Data collection is the cause of the problem not the solution.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: