MyHeritage 2017 Data Breach
Platform · Genealogy and DNA services · Family history platform · Global
MyHeritage Genealogy & DNA Platform Breach (2017, Disclosed 2018): 92 Million User Email Addresses & Password Hashes Exposed
Genealogy and DNA testing platform.
Confirmed · 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.
92.3MRecords
2017Year
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 October 2017, genealogy service MyHeritage suffered a data breach exposing 92,284,195 accounts, discovered in June 2018 on a private server outside the company. The exposed data was limited to email addresses and passwords stored as per-user salted SHA-1 hashes. MyHeritage stated that DNA/genetic data, family trees, and payment information were held on separate systems and were not part of the breach.
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…
92.3M records analyzed
About MyHeritage
MyHeritage is a genealogy and DNA-testing platform that lets users build family trees, search historical records, and analyze genetic ancestry.
Why They Hold Your Data
Family-history and DNA platforms collect identity, contact details, family trees, relationship mappings, historical records, and genetic data tied to genealogy services.
Recent Developments
MyHeritage disclosed the breach in June 2018 after a researcher found the data on an external server, and it stated that DNA data and family trees were stored on separate systems that were not affected.
Data Points Exposed
2 verified field types
Email Address
Password High
Breach Impact
Exposure is limited to credentials, so the primary risk is credential stuffing and phishing; notably, no genetic or family-tree data was exposed despite the sensitive nature of the platform.
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).
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