Wattpad Details

Wattpad

Toronto, Canada • employees • Media & Entertainment

Industry

Media & Entertainment

Security Incidents

Wattpad is a website for reading and publishing original written fiction and connecting with fellow writers and readers. Its most popular genres are romance, teen fiction, and fan fiction.

Security Incidents

Wattpad Breach of Jun 2020

Severity Score

Significant

Type

Data Breach

Summary

In June 2020, Wattpad, a popular online storytelling platform, experienced a significant data breach that exposed the personal information of approximately 268 million users. The breach was carried out by an unknown threat actor who managed to access and exfiltrate a vast amount of user data, including email addresses, usernames, encrypted passwords, and other account-related information. The compromised data was later found being sold on various dark web forums. Wattpad promptly initiated an investigation and worked with cybersecurity experts to address the breach, enhance security measures, ...
Show more

Severity

The Wattpad data breach in June 2020 was a severe incident that led to unauthorized access to the platform's database, compromising the personal information of millions of its global user base. The breach exposed sensitive data such as passwords, IP addresses, email addresses, dates of birth, bios, genders, geographic locations, names, social media profiles, user website URLs, and usernames.

Impact

The breach impacted approximately 270 million users, exposing their personal information including names, usernames, email and IP addresses, genders, birth dates, and passwords stored as bcrypt hashes. The data was initially sold and later published on a public hacking forum, leading to widespread sharing of the compromised information.