CyberServe data breach

Breach date: 2021-10-29. Added to this index: 2021-11-04. Accounts affected: about 1.1M. Domain: cyberserve.co.il.

What happened

In October 2021, the Israeli hosting provider CyberServe was breached and ransomed before having a substantial amount of their customer data leaked publicly by a group known as "Black Shadow". Amongst the data was the LGBTQ dating site Atraf and the Machon Mor medical institute. Due to multiple different sites being compromised, the impacted data is broad and ranges from relationship information to medical data to email addresses and passwords stored in plain text. The data was made available to HIBP with support from May Brooks-Kempler, founder of the Think Safe Cyber community in Israel.

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

  • Dates of birth: Your full birth date, day, month and year, collected at signup for age checks, identity verification, insurance quotes, birthday offers or government services.
  • Drinking habits: Answers about alcohol use, such as never, socially or regularly, stored by dating apps, health and fitness apps, insurer questionnaires, surveys, and sometimes treatment or recovery services.
  • 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.
  • Family structure: Information about your household, such as the number and ages of children, whether you are a single parent, who lives with you and whether you care for someone, collected by insurers, schools, government services, surveys and marketing databases.
  • Genders: The gender or sex recorded on your profile, usually picked from a list at signup, sometimes with a title such as Mr or Ms or a gender identity option beyond male and female.
  • Geographic locations: A general location recorded on your account, such as a country, state, city, postcode or region, either typed in by you or estimated from your IP address.
  • HIV statuses: Information showing a person's HIV status, test results, viral load, PrEP use or treatment, held by clinics, pharmacies, testing services, research studies, health apps and dating apps that let users share their status.
  • IP addresses: The network addresses your devices used when you signed up, logged in or posted, recorded by almost every website in its access logs.
  • Names: Your first name, surname and sometimes middle name or initials, as you gave them when you signed up. It appears in almost every breach because nearly every account asks for it.
  • 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.
  • Personal health data: Information about your physical or mental health: diagnoses, medications, test results, conditions, fitness and cycle tracking, therapy notes and insurance claims, held by clinics, apps, insurers and wellness services.
  • Phone numbers: Your mobile or landline number, collected at signup for contact, delivery updates, marketing and two-factor codes.

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 CyberServe breach?

The CyberServe breach exposed Dates of birth, Drinking habits, Email addresses, Family structure, Genders, Geographic locations, HIV statuses, IP addresses, Names, Passwords, Personal health data, Phone numbers, Physical attributes, Private messages, Profile photos, Religions, Sexual orientations, Smoking habits, Usernames. About 1.1M accounts were affected.

Was I affected by the CyberServe 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 CyberServe 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