Adapt Data Breach
Adapt.io B2B Contact Database Breach: 153M Professional Records Exposed
B2B contact and company data provider.
Risk Interpretation
Exposure enables spearphishing, executive impersonation, business email compromise, and large-scale prospect targeting. Because the data is already structured for outreach, it is immediately useful for abuse.
Impact & Downstream Threats
The 2018 breach exposed the risks of the B2B contact-data industry in concentrated form. HIBP says an unprotected database hosted by Adapt exposed more than 9.3 million unique records containing names, employers, job titles, contact details, and employer attributes such as company size and revenue, and it notes that no response was received from Adapt when contacted. That made the dataset immediately useful for phishing, business email compromise pretexting, executive targeting, lead-list enrich
- SIM swap attacks where phone numbers are present
- Targeted phishing campaigns using exposed email addresses
- Doxxing risk from physical address exposure
- Employment-based social engineering using job and employer data
- Social media account targeting and impersonation
Threat Vectors
Breach Intelligence
Executive Summary
Adapt.io, a B2B sales-intelligence company that aggregates and sells business contact data, left a database publicly exposed without any password protection in November 2018. Security researcher Bob Diachenko discovered the unprotected server and found it contained over 9.3 million unique records. Adapt did not respond when contacted about the exposure. The exposed records included names, email addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, job titles, employer information, social media profiles, and company attributes such as organization size and revenue. Most affected individuals had no direct relationship with Adapt and were likely unaware their information had been collected. Because the data was already structured for sales outreach, it required no further processing to be weaponized. No regulatory action or breach notification has been documented in connection with this incident. For those affected, the structured nature of the data creates lasting risk. Attackers can use it to craft convincing spearphishing emails, impersonate executives, and build detailed profiles for business email compromise schemes. People who receive unexpected or highly personalized business outreach should treat it with caution.
About Adapt
Adapt.io is a B2B sales-intelligence and lead-data company that provides business contact records, company information, prospecting tools, enrichment services, and API access for sales and marketing teams. Its public-facing product is built around helping users identify decision-makers, verify work contact details, and feed contact intelligence into outbound and revenue workflows.
Why They Hold Your Data
B2B sales intelligence platforms aggregate business contact records, company information, job titles, emails, phone numbers, and employer-linked identifiers for lead generation and outbound sales targeting.
Recent Developments
Adapt remains an active lead-intelligence platform and continues to market a large global contact database, enrichment tooling, browser extension workflows, and Data OS API products for sales teams. Current public materials emphasize verified B2B data, prospecting automation, integrations, and broad international coverage rather than any major shift away from the core brokered-contact model.
Data Points Exposed
Exposure Categories
Canonical Fields
email_address, employer, full_name, job_information:job_title, phone_number, physical_address, social_media_profile
Dark Web Verification
- Dataset containing ~153.4M records identified in breach intelligence sources
- Data indexed and searchable across breach notification platforms
- Source: adapt.io-2018;Adapt Data Breach
Recommended Actions
⚠️ Do not assume this is low sensitivity.
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- A public-facing individual
- A high-profile executive
- A customer of Adapt
- Or concerned about credential reuse
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