Adapt 2018 Data Breach
Data Broker · B2B contact and company data aggregation · Sales intelligence platform and lead data provider · USA
Adapt.io B2B Contact Database Breach: 153M Professional Records Exposed
B2B contact and company data provider.
Confirmed · ObscureIQ Intelligence
Breach Risk Index i
41/100
Lower riskHigher risk
Moderate: notable exposure with meaningful misuse potential.
Data Sensitivity i
StandardExposed data is largely lower-sensitivity. Standard identity-protection precautions are advised.
153.4MRecords
2018Year
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.
Crucial data exposed
AddressPhysical address
Breach 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.
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…
153.4M records analyzed
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
7 verified field types
Email Address
Employer
Full Name
Job Information
Phone Number
Physical address High
Social Media Profile
Breach Impact
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 enrichment, and broader corporate identity mapping.
Exploitation & Downstream Threats
• 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
Principal Risk Advisory
What this means for a principal
A data-broker/identity breach: aggregated identity attributes re-seed broker networks and enrich targeting of the individual. For a high-profile principal this is targeting-grade, not merely identity-theft-grade: the combination lets an adversary locate, impersonate, or pressure the principal with little additional work.
What You Should Do
- Treat the home address as exposed: review mail and package handling and physical-security routines, and brief household staff to verify unusual requests.
- Guard against SIM-swap and vishing: add a carrier port-out PIN and verify any 'support' calls independently.
- 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 and footprint neutralization: cross-reference against broker-available data and suppress still-removable elements, prioritizing address and phone, since this record re-seeds broker networks.
- ThreatWatch tuned to this incident's identifiers and misuse pattern (impersonation and targeting patterns, not generic credential monitoring).
Protect Yourself
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