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Adobe data breach

From Breaches, in the HARD wiki · Updated
This article is about the October 2013 breach of Adobe. For every breach, see Breaches.

The Adobe data breach exposed 152,445,165 accounts from adobe.com in October 2013. The data taken includes password hints, passwords, usernames and email addresses.[1]

Have I Been Pwned verified it and added it to its search on 4 Dec 2013, 2 months later. It is the 14th largest of the 618 breaches in HARD’s list.

What was exposed

Adobe’s breach included 4 kinds of data. What each lets criminals do:

DataWhat it’s used for
Password hintsPart of how you sign in.
PasswordsCriminals try leaked passwords on email, banking and shopping sites, because people reuse them.
UsernamesHalf of a login. With a reused password, it opens other accounts.
Email addressesExpect scam emails that name the company to look genuine.

What to do

  1. Check whether you’re in it.Search your email address on Have I Been Pwned. It tells you which breaches it appears in, Adobe among them, without showing the data.
  2. Change your Adobe password.If the account still exists, sign in at Adobe (adobe.com) and change it.
  3. Change it anywhere you used the same one.Start with your email, then banking and shopping. Leaked passwords are tried on other sites automatically, within days.
  4. Use a password manager and two-step sign-in.A different password for every site means one breach can’t open the rest. Two-step sign-in stops a leaked password working on its own.
  5. Distrust messages that mention Adobe.Scammers use breach data to sound genuine. Don’t click links in emails or texts about the breach; go to the site yourself.

Timeline

  • : the breach, as best it can be dated.
  • : Have I Been Pwned verifies the data and adds it to its search, 2 months later.
  • : the entry was last updated.

Similar breaches

Breaches that leaked the same kinds of data, closest in time:

  • iMesh, September 2013, 49 million accounts
  • Neopets, May 2013, 27 million accounts
  • We Heart It, November 2013, 8.6 million accounts
  • Vodafone, November 2013, 56,021 accounts
  • Disqus, July 2012, 18 million accounts
  • Bitly, May 2014, 9.3 million accounts

See Breaches for all 618, and Updates for keeping your devices patched.

References

  1. ^ Troy Hunt. “Adobe”, Have I Been Pwned, added 4 Dec 2013. Breach data licensed CC BY 4.0.