Cit0day 2020 Data Breach
Data & Identity / Credential Compilation / Cybercrime
Cit0day (2020): Credentials From 23,000+ Hacked Sites Aggregated
Aggregated credential archive from thousands of hacked sites, not a single company.
Compilation · ObscureIQ Intelligence
Breach Risk Index i
65/100
Lower riskHigher risk
High and current: recent, valuable data circulating on the dark web now.
Data Sensitivity i
RestrictedBeing associated with this breach can itself be harmful. Disclosure is limited and presence is not confirmed to unverified parties.
195.4MRecords
2020Year
The Breach Risk Index (BRI) is a proprietary 0–100 score rating how dangerous a breach is right now, based on how recently the data has been circulating on the dark web and how valuable it is to attackers.
Breach Summary
In November 2020, a ~120 GB archive nicknamed Cit0day, containing credential dumps from more than 23,000 hacked websites (about 226 million records), was posted on several hacking forums.
Full threat analysis, exploitation vectors, and principal guidance below.
10 additional sections · verified field analysis · defensive doctrine
Querying breach corpus…
Cross-referencing exposed field types…
Resolving threat-actor attribution…
Compiling principal risk advisory…
195.4M records analyzed
About Cit0day
Cit0day is not a breached company but an aggregated archive of credential dumps drawn from more than 23,000 small hacked websites, distributed as a single large collection on hacking forums.
Why They Hold Your Data
As an aggregated archive, it holds email addresses and passwords compiled from tens of thousands of separate small-site breaches rather than one organization's data.
Recent Developments
A roughly 120 GB Cit0day archive was posted on Russian-language hacking forums in November 2020 after the associated service was taken offline.
Data Points Exposed
2 verified field types
Email Address
Password High
Breach Impact
As a mass aggregation of small-site breaches, its impact is broad credential exposure feeding credential-stuffing rather than harm to a single company.
Exploitation & Downstream Threats
• Credential stuffing against reused passwords across other platforms | • Targeted phishing campaigns using exposed email addresses
Principal Risk Advisory
What this means for a principal
A consumer-service breach: contact and account data supports phishing, account takeover and profile enrichment. For a high-profile principal the main risk is credible impersonation and enrichment of existing exposure.
What You Should Do
- Reset any reused passwords and enable MFA on email first, then financial accounts.
- Do not use unofficial 'am I affected' lookups; several are themselves harvesting operations.
How ObscureIQ Can Help
- Corpus confirmation: determine whether and where the principal (plus household and staff) appear in this dataset and which specific fields are exposed for them.
- Exposure mapping: cross-reference the exposed identifiers against broker-available data to size and prioritize the principal's wider footprint.
- ThreatWatch tuned to this incident's identifiers and misuse pattern (impersonation and targeting patterns, not generic credential monitoring).
Protect Yourself
Protect Yourself: Limited Disclosure
Check Your Own Exposure: Verification Required
This data originates from an illicit online forum, and being listed is not proof of involvement. To protect people from false association, we confirm exposure only to the individual concerned. Verify your identity to privately check your own exposure.
We never confirm whether a specific person appears in this breach to anyone but that person.
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