UTServicesLISACyber safetyNewsPasswords of 1600 (former) UT employees and students publicly searchable

Passwords of 1600 (former) UT employees and students publicly searchable

Lately, there has been a lot of publicity about a list of e-mail addresses and passwords that could be found through a search engine.

1600 addresses ending in utwente.nl are also included in that list. We have analyzed the list together with other organizations. The conclusion is that this list contains information from old to very old breaches at all kinds of organizations which are not affiliated with the university. Remember the breach at LinkedIn in 2012 and that at Last.FM.in 2016.

We have decided not to contact the 1600 addresses. CERT-UT uses the services of haveibeenpwned from where we receive a notification when passwords are made public that have a utwente.nl address associated with it. We have already processed many of the breaches, of which the data are now to be found, in the past. If possible, we have already informed the relevant users of the data breach.

In all these cases we advised the users to change the password of the account in question. We could do that because we were aware of the organization where the leak had occurred. That is not possible with this list. We usually also advise users to change the password of their ICT account. Because the leaks are all very old, that password has changed at least once.

Remains to give some advice.

  1. Use different passwords for different organizations. websites.
  2. Use a password manager to manage those passwords.
  3. Do a (regular) search on haveibeenpwned for leaks with your (non-utwente.nl) accounts.
  4. Also check for yourself on the search website to your own non-utwente.nl addresses.

If you have any questions or comments, do not hesitate to contact CERT-UT.