8tracks data breach

Breach date: 2017-06-27. Added to this index: 2018-02-16. Accounts affected: about 18M. Domain: 8tracks.com.

What happened

In June 2017, the online playlists service known as 8Tracks suffered a data breach which impacted 18 million accounts. In their disclosure, 8Tracks advised that "the vector for the attack was an employee’s GitHub account, which was not secured using two-factor authentication". Salted SHA-1 password hashes for users who didn't sign up with either Google or Facebook authentication were also included. The data was provided to HIBP by whitehat security researcher and data analyst Adam Davies and contained almost 8 million unique email addresses. The complete set of 18M records was later provided by JimScott.Sec@protonmail.com and updated in HIBP accordingly.

Breach data sourced from Have I Been Pwned, used under CC BY 4.0. Additional breach metadata provided by XposedOrNot. DataExposed is an independent service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by either.

What was exposed

  • Email addresses: The email address you used to register or log in. It is the most common field in breaches because it doubles as your username on most sites.
  • Passwords: The secret you use to sign in, stored by the breached service either in plain text, in a scrambled form called a hash, or encrypted. How it was stored decides how quickly it can be recovered.

What to do now

  1. Check whether your own address is in this dataset with the free email breach check.
  2. Change the password on this service and every other site where you used the same password.
  3. Turn on two-factor authentication on your email account first, because it is the reset path for everything else.
  4. Treat calls and messages that quote real details about you as hostile until you verify them another way.

Frequently asked questions

What data was leaked in the 8tracks breach?

The 8tracks breach exposed Email addresses, Passwords. About 18M accounts were affected.

Was I affected by the 8tracks breach?

Run the free email breach check with the address you used on that service. It will tell you whether your address appears in this dataset.

What should I do about the 8tracks breach?

Change the password on that account and everywhere you reused it, then turn on two-factor authentication. Passwords from this breach are traded and tried automatically against other sites.

Next steps