Qatar National Bank data breach

Breach date: 2015-07-01. Added to this index: 2016-05-01. Accounts affected: about 89K. Domain: qnb.com.

What happened

In July 2015, the Qatar National Bank suffered a data breach which exposed 15k documents totalling 1.4GB and detailing more than 100k accounts with passwords and PINs. The incident was made public some 9 months later in April 2016 when the documents appeared publicly on a file sharing site. Analysis of the breached data suggests the attack began by exploiting a SQL injection flaw in the bank's 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

  • Bank account numbers: The number that identifies your account at a bank, usually stored with a sort code, routing number or BSB so a payment can be made or collected.
  • Customer feedback: Survey responses, star ratings, product reviews, complaints and comments you sent to a company, usually stored with your account, order or contact details.
  • 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.
  • Financial transactions: Records of payments into and out of your accounts: dates, amounts, merchants, payees, references and sometimes locations, held by banks, payment apps, accounting software and budgeting tools.
  • 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.
  • Government issued IDs: Numbers or images of official identity documents, such as passports, national identity cards, Social Security numbers, Medicare cards, tax file numbers, residence permits and voter cards.
  • 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.
  • Marital statuses: Your relationship status, such as single, married, de facto, separated, divorced or widowed, collected by insurers, lenders, government forms, dating apps and marketing surveys.
  • 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.
  • 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 Qatar National Bank breach?

The Qatar National Bank breach exposed Bank account numbers, Customer feedback, Dates of birth, Financial transactions, Genders, Geographic locations, Government issued IDs, IP addresses, Marital statuses, Names, Passwords, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, PINs, Security questions and answers, Spoken languages. About 89K accounts were affected.

Was I affected by the Qatar National Bank 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 Qatar National Bank 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