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Nitro data breach

From Breaches, in the HARD wiki · Updated
This article is about the September 2020 breach of Nitro. For every breach, see Breaches.

The Nitro data breach exposed 77,159,696 accounts from gonitro.com in September 2020. The data taken includes passwords, names and email addresses.[1]

Have I Been Pwned verified it and added it to its search on 19 Jan 2021, 4 months later. It is the 31st largest of the 618 breaches in HARD’s list.

What was exposed

Nitro’s breach included 3 kinds of data. What each lets criminals do:

DataWhat it’s used for
PasswordsCriminals try leaked passwords on email, banking and shopping sites, because people reuse them.
NamesMakes scam messages personal enough to believe.
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, Nitro among them, without showing the data.
  2. Change your Nitro password.If the account still exists, sign in at Nitro (gonitro.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 Nitro.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, 4 months later.

Similar breaches

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

  • Wattpad, June 2020, 269 million accounts
  • Tokopedia, April 2020, 71 million accounts
  • Mathway, January 2020, 26 million accounts
  • bigbasket, October 2020, 25 million accounts
  • ShopBack, September 2020, 21 million accounts
  • Aptoide, April 2020, 20 million accounts

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

References

  1. ^ Troy Hunt. “Nitro”, Have I Been Pwned, added 19 Jan 2021. Breach data licensed CC BY 4.0.