Type of siteCreated byURLrank(Global 12/2018)CommercialYesRegistrationOptional2 million verified email subscribersLaunched4 December 2013; 6 years ago ( 2013-12-04)Current statusOnlineHave I Been Pwned? ( HIBP, with 'Pwned' pronounced like 'poned,' and alternatively written with the capitalization 'have i been pwned?' ) is a website that allows internet users to check whether their personal data has been compromised. The service collects and analyzes hundreds of and containing information about billions of leaked accounts, and allows users to search for their own information by entering their username or email address. Users can also sign up to be notified if their email address appears in future dumps.

If your email has been pwned, it means that the security of your account has been compromised. Every now and then a large breach on a major website or service is broadly reported around the world.

The site has been widely touted as a valuable resource for internet users wishing to protect their own security and privacy. Have I Been Pwned? Was created by security expert on 4 December 2013.As of June 2019, Have I Been Pwned?

Averages around one hundred and fifty thousand daily visitors, the site has nearly three million active email subscribers and contains records of almost eight billion accounts. Contents.Features The primary function of Have I Been Pwned? Since it was launched is to provide the general public a means to check if their private information has been leaked or compromised. Visitors to the website can enter an email address, and see a list of all known data breaches with records tied to that email address.

The website also provides details about each data breach, such as the backstory of the breach and what specific types of data were included in it.Have I Been Pwned? Also offers a 'Notify me' service that allows visitors to subscribe to notifications about future breaches. Once someone signs up with this notification mailing service, they will receive an email message any time their personal information is found in a new data breach.In September 2014, Hunt added functionality that enabled new data breaches to be automatically added to HIBP's database. The new feature used Dump Monitor, a bot which detects and broadcasts likely password dumps found on pastes, to automatically add new potential breaches in real-time. Data breaches often show up on pastebins before they are widely reported on; thus, monitoring this source allows consumers to be notified sooner if they've been compromised.Along with detailing which data breach events the email account has been affected by, the website also points those who appear in their database search to install a password manager, namely, which Troy Hunt has recently endorsed.

An online explanation on his website explains his motives and maintains that monetary gain is not the goal of this partnership.Pwned passwords In August 2017, Hunt made public 306 million passwords which could be accessed via a web search or downloadable in bulk.In February 2018, British computer scientist created a communication protocol (using and ) to anonymously verify if a password was leaked without fully disclosing the searched password. This protocol was implemented as a public API in Hunt's service and is now consumed by multiple websites and services including. This approach was later replicated by 's Password Checkup feature. Researchers have called for a redesign of the current approach, highlighting the feasibility of multiple attacks under various conditions. Proposals for the redesign revolve around and distribution-sensitive cryptography.History Launch. Troy Hunt, the creator of Have I Been Pwned?In late 2013, web security expert Troy Hunt was analyzing data breaches for trends and patterns. He realized breaches could greatly impact users who might not even be aware their data was compromised, and as a result, began developing HIBP.

'Probably the main catalyst was Adobe,' said Hunt of his motivation for starting the site, referring to the that affected 153 million accounts in October 2013.Hunt launched Have I Been Pwned? On 4 December 2013 with an announcement on his blog. At this time, the site had just five data breaches indexed: Adobe Systems, and Sony Pictures. However, the site now had the functionality to easily add future breaches as soon as they were made public:Now that I have a platform on which to build I'll be able to rapidly integrate future breaches and make them quickly searchable by people who may have been impacted. It's a bit of an unfair game at the moment – attackers and others wishing to use data breaches for malicious purposes can very quickly obtain and analyse the data but your average consumer has no feasible way of pulling gigabytes of accounts from a and discovering whether they've been compromised or not. — Troy Hunt Data breaches Since its launch, the primary development focus of HIBP has been to add new data breaches as quickly as possible after they are leaked to the public.In July 2015, online dating service, known for encouraging users to have extramarital, suffered, and the identities of more than 30 million users of the service were leaked to the public.

The data breach received wide media coverage, presumably due to the large number of impacted users and the perceived shame of having an affair. According to Hunt, the breach's publicity resulted in a 57,000% increase in traffic to HIBP. Following this breach, Hunt added functionality to HIBP by which breaches considered 'sensitive' would not be publicly searchable, and would only be revealed to subscribers of the email notification system.

This functionality was enabled for the Ashley Madison data, as well as for data from other potentially scandalous sites, such as.In October 2015, Hunt was contacted by an anonymous source who provided him with a dump of 13.5 million users' email addresses and plaintext passwords, claiming it came from 000webhost, a free provider. Working with Thomas Fox-Brewster of, he verified that the dump was most likely legitimate by testing email addresses from it and by confirming sensitive information with several 000webhost customers. Hunt and Fox-Brewster attempted many times to contact 000webhost to further confirm the authenticity of the breach, but were unable to get a response.

On 29 October 2015, following a reset of all passwords and the publication of Fox-Brewster's article about the breach, 000webhost announced the data breach via their page.In early November 2015, two breaches of gambling payment providers Neteller and Skrill were confirmed to be legitimate by the, the parent company of both providers. The data included 3.6 million records from Neteller obtained in 2009 using an exploit in, and 4.2 million records from Skrill (then known as Moneybookers) that leaked in 2010 after a was compromised.

The combined 7.8 million records were added to HIBP's database.Later that month, electronic toy maker was hacked, and an anonymous source privately provided a database containing nearly five million parents' records to HIBP. According to Hunt, this was the fourth largest breach to date.In May 2016, an unprecedented series of very large data breaches that dated back several years were all released in a short timespan. These breaches included 360 million accounts from circa 2009, 164 million accounts from 2012, 65 million accounts from early 2013, and 40 million accounts from adult dating service Fling.com. These datasets were all put up for sale by an anonymous hacker named 'peaceofmind', and were shortly thereafter provided to Hunt to be included in HIBP.

In June 2016, an additional 'mega breach' of 171 million accounts from Russian social network was added to HIBP's database.In August 2017, featured Have I Been Pwned? On Hunt's discovery of a spamming operation that has been drawing on a list of 711.5 million email addresses.Midway June 2019, Hunt announced plans to sell Have I Been Pwned? To a yet to be determined organisation. In his blog, he outlined his wishes to reduce personal stress and expand the site beyond what he was able to accomplish himself. As of the release of the blog post, he was working with KPMG to find companies he deemed suitable which were interested in the acquisition.Branding The name 'Have I Been Pwned?' Is based on the jargon term ', which means 'to compromise or take control, specifically of another computer or application.'

HIBP's logo includes the text ';-, which is a common attack string. A hacker trying to take control of a website's database might use such an attack string to manipulate a website into running malicious code. Injection attacks are one of the most common vectors by which a database breach can occur; they are the #1 most common web application vulnerability on the Top 10 list. See also.References.

25 June 2018. Seltzer, Larry (5 December 2013). Retrieved 18 March 2016. ^ Price, Rob (20 August 2015). Retrieved 18 March 2016.

^. 11 June 2019. Retrieved 11 June 2019.

O'Neill, Patrick Howell (16 September 2014). Retrieved 20 May 2016. 22 February 2018. 29 March 2018. Retrieved 29 May 2018. Ars Technica. Retrieved 24 May 2018.

Dynasty tactics 2 items list. Retrieved 24 May 2018. Retrieved 24 May 2018. Conger, Kate. Retrieved 24 May 2018. Condon, Stephanie. Retrieved 24 May 2018.

Coren, Michael J. Retrieved 24 May 2018. Wagenseil I, Paul. BleepingComputer.

Dsouza, Melisha (6 February 2019). Packt Hub. Li, Lucy; Pal, Bijeeta; Ali, Junade; Sullivan, Nick; Chatterjee, Rahul; Ristenpart, Thomas (6 November 2019). 'Protocols for Checking Compromised Credentials'. Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. New York, NY, USA: ACM: 1387–1403.:.

Coz, Joseph (10 March 2016). Retrieved 18 March 2016. ^ (5 December 2013). Retrieved 20 May 2016. Rash, Wayne (28 May 2016).

Retrieved 15 June 2016. Fox-Brewster, Thomas (28 October 2015). Retrieved 20 May 2016.

000webhost (29 October 2015). Retrieved 20 May 2016. Fox-Brewster, Thomas (30 November 2015). Retrieved 20 May 2016. Franceschi-Bicchierai, Lorenzo (27 November 2015). Retrieved 31 March 2016.

Storm, Darlene (30 May 2016). Retrieved 15 June 2016. Whittaker, Zack (10 June 2016).

Retrieved 15 June 2016. Kelion, Leo (30 August 2017). Retrieved 30 August 2017. Retrieved 20 May 2016.External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to.

on troyhunt.com.

It looks impossible to pronounce: pwn.

We're not feeling mean enough to make you guess how to say it, so we'll just come right out and tell you: it's pronounced like it's spelled 'pone.' As in, take the word own and put a 'p' in front and then take out the 'o' but pretend it's still there.

'Pwn' is a lot like the sense of 'own' that means 'to have power or mastery over (someone).' It has also been used to describe the act of gaining illegal access to something.

You may have heard your kids saying it when they're playing video games with their friends:

I totally pwned you!

Aw, man, I got pwned!

Pwned you!!

If you play a lot of video games you probably say it yourself. And you may have been saying it for quite some time.

The word has been used in some pockets of the gaming world since the early years of this century, but it's increasingly making appearances in non-gaming contexts, where it typically sidles in with a decidedly informal, slangy tone:

Last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced it would not change its dismal tune on cannabis, and that weed would remain a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Then, the Obama administration announced it would ease barriers on marijuana research, despite the Schedule I restriction. Then, a bunch of federal attorneys general got pwned in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals regarding their prosecution of medical marijuana businesses, which is a pretty big deal.
—Vince Sliwoski, The Portland Mercury (Portland, Oregon), 24 Aug. 2016

Pwn is a lot like own, then, in the sense of 1b, 'to have power or mastery over (someone).' (This is, of course, no coincidence. The word likely has its origin in a mistyping of own, what with the p and o being so close to one another on the QWERTY keyboard and all.)

Like pwn, this sense of own has long covered territory also covered by the verb rout to communicate power or mastery in competition specifically. (That rout word is a busy one; see homograph 5, sense 1c: 'to defeat decisively or disastrously.')

Pwn has been branching out of late:

Security experts from Chinese security firm Tencent Keen Security Lab announced on Twitter late Monday night that they had “pwned Tesla Model S remotely” by exploiting multiple flaws in the latest models running the most recent software.
—Kavita Iyer, TechWorm (techworm.net), 21 Sept. 2016

Pepsi man game online. Here it has to do with hacking—that is, gaining illegal access—to something, such as a computer, or, as above, a car.

For all the pwning going on, there's clearly a need for a noun to go with this verb. Enter pwnage. As in:

The only way to avoid a total pwnage of your Android device is to use an antivirus solution or only install reputable, trusted applications.
—Catalin Cimpa, Softpedia (softpedia.com), 19 May 2016

Still no sighting of adjectival use, but we won't be surprised when it shows up.

Words We're Watching talks about words we are increasingly seeing in use but that have not yet met our criteria for entry.

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Merriam-Webster unabridged