MDPI data breach

Breach date: 2016-08-30. Added to this index: 2018-03-25. Accounts affected: about 845K. Domain: mdpi.com.

What happened

In August 2016, the Swiss scholarly open access publisher known as MDPI had 17.5GB of data obtained from an unprotected Mongo DB instance. The data contained email exchanges between MDPI and their authors and reviewers which included 845k unique email addresses. MDPI have confirmed that the system has since been protected and that no data of a sensitive nature was impacted. As such, they concluded that notification to their subscribers was not necessary due to the fact that all their authors and reviewers are available online on their website.

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.
  • Email messages: The content of emails you sent or received, including subject lines, message bodies, attachments and contacts, exposed through a compromised mailbox, an email provider or a company that kept copies.
  • 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.

What to do now

  1. Check whether your own address is in this dataset with the free email breach check.
  2. Review the accounts connected to this service and turn on two-factor authentication.
  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 MDPI breach?

The MDPI breach exposed Email addresses, Email messages, IP addresses, Names. About 845K accounts were affected.

Was I affected by the MDPI 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 MDPI breach?

Treat any message that quotes details from this breach as suspicious, turn on two-factor authentication, and consider removing your details from people-search sites if your address or phone was included.

Next steps