DEV Community: BreachDirectory

What Can Be Done with an Email Address? a Cybercriminal Perspective

BreachDirectory — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 16:00:00 +0000

Data breaches have one thing in common – they affect a myriad of online users and various data classes of data as well. One of the main data classes that are affected are email addresses – what can cybercriminals do with them? That's what we answer in this blog.

Data breaches are notorious for the data breach classes that are being stolen. Each data breach affects varying classes of information ranging from usernames, email addresses, and passwords to geographical locations, full names, and credit card details. Many attackers collect stolen data to achieve various purposes – some use the data for credential-stuffing attacks, some use the data to stalk people, some use the data to accomplish identity theft attacks, and attack various services that are of interest to them.

Email Addresses

One thing almost all data breaches have in common, though, are email addresses – as far as data breaches are concerned, email addresses in them are frequently associated with usernames, IP addresses, and other miscellaneous information. Email addresses, though, are amongst the most frequently stolen pieces of data and it's very easy to understand why – almost all services store email addresses in their database because email addresses are one of the most frequently used assets to log in to a service.

Once email addresses are stolen from a database, they're usually stolen together with hashed or plain text passwords. In a data breach, stolen data classes (emails included) usually look like so (in this case, the password is hashed with MD5):

demo@demo.com:fe01ce2a7fbac8fafaed7c982a04e229

Or like so (in this case, username is the username):

demo@demo.com:username:demo

The data looks like this mostly because it's exported from a MySQL-based database using the SELECT * INTO OUTFILE query: cybercriminals love this approach since it's quick, allows them to dump data out of the database in a quick fashion, and the text file usually occupies less space on the disk than output provided by mysqldump or other tools.

Many cyber criminals use such data for credential stuffing – an attack where data stolen from one service is used to access another service and steal data from that service too. Email addresses alone are valuable too – since many attackers collect data over the period of months or even years, if they have a "target" (a person that they're targeting), re-used data is a gold mine since the data taken as a result of the data breach into the service B might reveal more data than the data stolen from the service A.

As such, attackers are easily able to map out various kinds of information about a person including, but not limited to:

His or her email address and, if applicable, a list of the most frequently used usernames by that person
A set of passwords that are most frequently used by that person
His or her approximate location by looking up the IP address
His or her phone number
If applicable, a list of aliases (people) who that person may know by deriving data from other data breaches, etc.

With that information, attackers can do some damage ranging from utilizing the data to mount identity theft attacks to making unsolicited orders of pizza to that address, they can call the number and start harassing the person, etc.

Data Breach Search Engines

Data breach search engines are known to collect data as well – and different kinds of data breach search engines collect various pieces of data as well! The operators of such data breach search engines usually don't choose data to include or exclude (i.e. they collect all of the possible data leaks), however, many data breach search engines fall into either the ethical or unethical categories.

Ethical data breach search engines such as the one provided by BreachDirectory offer both a data breach search engine and API functionality to help keep companies, individuals, and universities in their OSINT endeavors – such data breach search engines don't display unnecessary data that can be used to cause harm (e.g. passwords, credit cards, etc.) and only let people search for their data (usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, or domains) by informing them whether their account is at risk or not, and their API doesn't display any sensitive data (passwords or other details) as well, while unethical data breach search engines act in a destructive manner that brings thousands of dollars of profit to their operators and massive damage to those impacted. Consider this: you visit a data breach scanner, search for an email address, and upon getting a couple "hits" (meaning that the account exists in the database of the data breach search engine) the data breach checker provides you with the username of that user, IP address, phone number, an associated password, and other related information? That wouldn't be fun, would it?

Yeah, we think so too. That's why BreachDirectory was built in an ethical manner – we never display sensitive data neither to those using the data breach scanner, neither to those using their BreachDirectory API key.

BreachDirectory also has a couple of plans applicable to all manner of use cases – from simple use cases where the API is being queried a couple hundred times a month, from more complex use cases like reselling the API or querying the data breach search engine via the API in a bulk manner.

The output of the data breach search engine usually looks like so if you're not at risk, while the outcome is a little different if the account is at risk:

The API documentation is a little more complex, but at the end of the day it isn't the end of the world either – it's built to be understandable to pretty much anyone:

Summary

An email address is an extremely valuable piece of data to any attacker – since many emails also come with affiliated usernames and passwords, these pieces of data are very frequently used to mount identity theft and credential stuffing attacks if the password of the email is found in another data breach.

Data breach checkers (data breach search engines) are usually able to solve this problem, however, they're also a very two-sided sword: some data breach scanners like BreachDirectory are built in an ethical manner, but many are not and the data derived from such data breach search engines are used to further mount identity theft attacks – that's why many attackers are paying for them!

Anyway, we hope that this blog has taught you something new – be careful out there, make sure you're not at risk by searching yourself on our data breach search engine, and until next time!

3 Ways to Improve the Security of Your Web Application

BreachDirectory — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 13:00:00 +0000

3 Ways to Improve the Security of Your Web Application

There are many ways to improve the security of our web applications. In this blog, we provide you with some of the most popular ones – have a read!

These days, web applications are getting breached left, right, and center – we mean, you're reading a data breach search engine's blog right now, aren't you?

Indeed, data breaches are a really big problem. With that being said, though, it isn't a problem that cannot be resolved – with just a couple of short steps, you will be on your way to web application security heaven!

Securing Code

First, have a look through your code – as developers, we often think that our code is and will always be as safe as possible, however, that's not always the case: you might be surprised how many cyberattacks occur due to the code not being protected against basic SQL injection, Cross-site Scripting, or other attacks. And we're serious! To avoid that happening to you:

Familiarize yourself with the attacks directed at web applications such as SQL injection, Cross-site Scripting, RFI, LFI, etc.
Make sure to write your code according to well-known standards, such as those belonging to OWASP.
If possible, use a Web Application Firewall (WAF.) Check this blog for more details.

Access Rights & Backups

Once you are positive that your code is safe, be cautious with access rights, credentials, and backup storage. Avoid granting too many access rights to users that do not exactly need to know certain things. For example, avoid granting all access rights to a database to a user that only needs to read data (run SELECT queries), etc.

Be cautious with backing up data, too – if you backup data, make sure to test all of your backups to ensure that they always can be recovered because your system will – will – go down when you least expect it to, trust us. Also, you might want to avoid backing your data up every day if you don't work on your web application all the time – backing up once or twice a week will do.

OSINT

Once you've secured your code, made sure that all of your access rights are properly in place, and thoroughly tested all of your backups, it may be time to keep an eye on OSINT tools as well. One of the main OSINT tools in this space will be a data breach search engine – data breach search engines usually help with a multitude of things:

They help you secure your email addresses, usernames, IP addresses, or website.
The data derived from data breach search engines doesn't occupy any space on your server.
Data breach search engines such as the one provided by BreachDirectory also have an API capability allowing you to sift through data and implement it into your own infrastructure.
Most adequate data breach search engines come with a couple of plans: for example, the BreachDirectory API will let you associate the API with one system, multiple systems, resell the API keys, or query the data breach search engine for multiple accounts at once. Here's what the BreachDirectory API documentation looks like:

Employing one or more of the aforementioned ways to protect your web applications will rapidly improve the security of your web applications. Make sure to employ at least a couple of these ways to protect yourself and your team, and until next time!

Cyber Liability vs. Data Breach

BreachDirectory — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 10:00:00 +0000

These days, data breaches are a frequent friend of web applications – however, there are so many terms related to them... As no one data breach is exactly the same and the details of these things are often so hard to find out, it's sometimes hard to distinguish a data breach from a data leak.

In this space, two terms that are often confused are cyber liability and a data breach – what's the difference between them? Are they different at all? That's what we're answering in this blog.

What Is a Data Breach?

First things first, a data breach is an incident where sensitive information is exposed to an unauthorized body. In many cases, a data breach is the direct result of an attack on a web application such as SQL injection, Cross-site Scripting, Cross-site Request Forgery, etc., but in some cases, data breaches can occur due to social engineering too.

The consequences of a data breach vary from company to company and they're directly dependent on the data classes that are exposed. The consequences of a data breach that exposes only usernames or email addresses may not be as severe as the consequences of a data breach that exposes emails, usernames, IP addresses, passwords, credit card details, and physical addresses – in many cases, though, stolen data is limited to email addresses, usernames, and passwords.

That's not to say that data breaches don't do damage, though – far from it: they're making headlines. Part of those headlines is due to the financial damage that they do – part of it is due to cyber liability. Companies that don't have cyber liability insurance often find themselves struggling to pay the price of a data breach.

What Is Cyber Liability?

Cyber liability is insurance from data breaches – in other words, insurance from cyber attacks. The main aim of cyber liability is to protect businesses from bleeding cash in case of a data breach – cyber liability insurance covers some or all of these aspects:

Customer notification about a data breach.
Recovering data.
Legal fees and related expenses.
In some cases, cyber liability includes the media and related third-party costs.

Most cyber insurance programs also sometimes require companies to notify their customers about a data breach. Depending on the program, it may also cover forensic expenses, and in some cases, even cover details about the negotiation and the payment of ransomware demands.

Minimizing Cyber Liability

In order to minimize cyber liability, you have to ensure that the application backing the product your company sells is as secure as possible. That may mean securing all of your code according to the standards set by OWASP, sanitizing every input field that you can imagine, using a web application firewall, or using data breach search engines and their API capabilities such as the one provided by BreachDirectory.

The data breach search engine and the BreachDirectory API both serve a distinct purpose – the data breach search engine allows everyone to assess their likelihood of being exposed in a data breach, and the BreachDirectory API allows companies, universities, individuals, and law enforcement agencies to implement the backbone – the data existing in the BreachDirectory search engine – into their own projects. Here's what the documentation of the API looks like:

As of the time of writing, the BreachDirectory API has a couple of distinct plans – a Personal Plan, a Simple Plan, a Bulk Plan, and a Reseller Plan. The Personal Plan is a fit for individuals that are interested in cyber security and want to implement the data behind the data breach search engine into their own projects, the Simple Plan is a fit for those who want to implement the API into more systems and query it more often, the Bulk Plan is a fit for companies and enterprises that want to secure a lot of accounts at once, and the reseller plan is a fit for those who want to make some money.

Before acquiring API keys from BreachDirectory, many users use the data breach search engine to assess their likelihood of being exposed in a data breach and the need to protect their own employees if they manage a team.

The BreachDirectory API is used for a variety of purposes, the main ones being related to open-source intelligence (OSINT) capabilities. Curious how it all would work on your infrastructure? Give it a try today and find out!

Web Application Security Headers Explained

BreachDirectory — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 16:00:00 +0000

Web application security headers. Some of you may have heard of them, some may not be aware of what they do – we will go through them in this blog.

Have you heard of HTTP headers? If you're a web developer, your answer is probably yes – an HTTP header is a part of the HTTP response that "informs" your browser about the metadata of the information that is being sent back and forth.

Security engineers have probably heard of web application security headers – or HTTP security headers – too. They are a similar thing – they are the same HTTP headers, it's just that they're security-based.

HTTP Security Headers

A couple of the most common HTTP security headers (or web security headers) are as follows:

Content-Security-Policy – this is one of the most important security headers briefly outlining a set of directives that help define from where scripts are loaded, what images should be displayed, what styles should prevent from being loaded into the website, where forms should direct users to, etc. – it includes the following headers:
- script-src which specifies the valid sources for javascript files: values include "self", "unsafe-eval", and "unsafe-inline."
- style-src which specifies the valid sources for stylesheets: values include "self", "unsafe-inline", and "blob."
- form-action which restricts the URLs that forms can direct users to. Very useful if you're concerned of your application being breached and the attacker modifying the code.
Strict-Transport-Security header instructs browsers that the application bearing this security header should only be accessed in a secure manner (by using SSL – all attempts to access the website via http:// will automatically convert to https://.)
X-Content-Type-Options lets browsers know that the MIME types in the headers should not be changed.
X-Frame-Options lets users instruct the browser whether frames like <frame>, <iframe>, <embed>, and <object> should be used by the website or not. The primary purpose of this security header is to avoid clickjacking attacks.
Referrer-Policy informs the server what referrer policy should be followed when the user visiting your website is visiting another website. You can let another site know what site the user is coming from, don't let it know anything at all, or let it know something.

Most HTTP security headers are defined like so:

The security headers itself are defined – that means choosing and utilizing any and all options for the security header that you wish to use. It may look something like this (the options are separated by a semicolon. Also the X-XSS-Protection header is used to protect the application against Cross-site Scripting attacks): Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; X-Frame-Options: deny; X-XSS-Protection:1; mode = block;
The security headers are implemented into an application via Apache, Nginx, or the programming language that is being used itself. That might mean opening up /etc/nginx/nginx.conf and adding a couple of add_header lines like so: add_header X-Frame-Options 'deny'; That might also mean defining the security headers with the header() function in PHP like so: header("X-Frame-Options: 'deny'"); Or it may mean setting headers via Apache by defining them like so: Header always set x-xss-protection "1; mode=block"

Before using security headers, though, make sure to evaluate their capabilities, choose the security headers you need, and implement them carefully. Also, do note that you may not need all of the security headers and only need one or two – that's fine too since for some, the functionality of websites may break due to what the headers do to the application (for example, a security header blocking frames may not be a good idea if the site is loading in youtube clips by using <iframe> code blocks.)

Data Breach Search Engines and Security Headers

If you're considering implementing security headers into the website of the company you work at, there's no doubt that your boss is very concerned about security. Why not suggest him to use the BreachDirectory API and get some BreachDirectory API keys to enhance the security of the company by being able to scan through tens of billions of rows of breached data to conduct OSINT operations? API keys can be purchased at the main page of BreachDirectory, and once you have an API key, you can implement the data inside of the BreachDirectory data breach search engine into the application of the company you work for.

Doing so provides you with a couple of key benefits:

It's possible to bulk-scan accounts to make sure they're not at risk of identity theft.
It's possible to implement the data derived from the API into other projects run by the company to further strengthen its security capabilities.
It's possible to conduct OSINT operations by using the tool.

The BreachDirectory API is well documented, too – everything's done in such a fashion that even a complete newbie could begin using the tool:

Make sure to give the bulk version of the API a try today – secure the entirety of the company you work at, and assist your boss in OSINT projects. It's easy!

Summary

In this blog, we've walked you through the functionalities of HTTP security headers. HTTP security headers are the same as HTTP headers, it's just that they're meant to enhance the security capabilities of the application they're built into.

Aside from using HTTP security headers, though, you might also want to consider using data breach checkers and data breach scanners like the one provided by BreachDirectory – the BreachDirectory data breach search engine will not only provide you with the necessary information to secure yourself, but also provide an API capability that lets you protect both yourself, your teammates, and people that are using the product your company is building.

We hope you've enjoyed reading this blog, stick around and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more information, and until next time!

Where Do Data Breaches Originate From? Top 10 Countries

BreachDirectory — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 19:00:00 +0000

In this blog, we're walking you through the top 10 countries that data breaches originate from according to our research. Have a read – we have some interesting stuff to share!

These days, data breaches are not news to anybody. Data breaches are happening left, right, and center, and according to the research made by Norton in September of 2022, they're the reason that hundreds of thousands – as many as 800,000 people – are getting hacked every year. As data breaches continue to happen, many wonder – just where exactly do they originate from?

Exploring the World in Data Breaches

According to the map provided by Varonis which tracks data breaches since 2013, the countries with the most amount of stolen records derived from data breaches are as follows:

United States leads the list with more than 6 billion ( 6,219,819,956 ) stolen records.
India is right behind the US with 394,307,531 stolen records.
China is catching up with 350,752,955 stolen records.
South Korea has 228,726,843 records stolen from their services.
The UK is a little better – it has "barely" 140,139,193 records.
Turkey is slightly behind with 132,312,866 stolen records.
Japan is right behind Turkey with 114,769,575 records.
South Africa has 106,654,166 lost or stolen records.
France is catching up with slightly more than 100 million records – according to Varonis, the exact number is just over 100 million with 100,099,535 records lost or stolen.

But that doesn't answer the question where do data breaches originate from. Is it the US? Perhaps the country is Russia as the country is touted for its cyber warfare capabilities. Or perhaps it's China? Well, the answer is not that straightforward. You see, the majority of attackers don't steal data from apps and websites using their real IP addresses – they use VPN services renowned for their ability to change the IP addresses of their users to the IP originating from another country which means that tracking the crime is relatively hard: add an additional investigation cost, and tracking down the perpetrator gets even harder. However, technological capabilities are not everywhere the same – by knowing the country where the data breach originated from (for example, by contacting the VPN vendor and asking for the logs), law enforcement agencies can easily track down the perpetrator. With that, we come to the top 10 countries where data breaches originate from. Most of these are based on our own research looking at data breaches, looking at investigation documents, and sources, and these are as follows:

_ Rank _	_ Country _	_ Details _
#1	China	It may be a surprise to some, but the first country "obsessed" with data breaches isn't the US or even Russia. It's China – and it's easy to understand why. First off, the country is amongst the biggest countries in the world, and according to Booz Allen, China is capable of cyber espionage, influence operations, as well as cyber-attacks and data breaches that cause massive amounts of destruction and damage.
#2	United States	It shouldn't come as a surprise that the first country in the list below China is the US. People and companies from the United States are amongst the biggest victims and perpetrators of cyber attacks as well – and considering the size of the country, the internet-enabled capabilities of those living there, and the amount of money the country is investing in cyber security every year (according to Statista, the US has the highest cybersecurity index (GCI) scores in the legal, technical, organizational, cooperation, and capacity-building aspects in cyber security too), it shouldn't be surprising at all.
#3	Brazil	According to multiple sources, Brazil is advancing in the cybersecurity ranking every year: however, that doesn't stop the country from ranking at the top of global cyber-crime rankings in regards to financial fraud and botnets.
#4	India	Judging by the strength of India's financial, technological, financial, intelligence and security capabilities, the country is frequently positioned amongst the so-called "third-world countries" as far as cyber warfare is concerned, however, that doesn't mean that no cyber attacks originate from India. According to our research, approximately 4-5% of cyber attacks in 2021 alone originated from India. Surprising, isn't it? The possibility of the majority of attacks being VPN-based isn't excluded, though.
#5	Germany	According to CFR, Germany as a country has approximately 14,000 soldiers and IT personnel as part of its cyber command – however, Deutche Welle says that the cyber security of both public institutions and private companies is lacking. Germany is somewhere in the middle of the cyber attack realm with approximately 5% attacks originating from the country in 2021 – it may be because attackers are using german VPNs or for other reasons. Part of the reason why might be because law enforcement in germany doesn't really have the means or the necessary experience to fend off cyberattacks.
#6	Vietnam	Vietnam seems like an unlikely candidate for cyber attacks to originate from, but according to numerous sources, around 4% of data breaches in 2021 originated from the country. It may as well have been caused by the fact that attackers are more and more inclined to use Vietnamese IP addresses, or for other reasons.
#7	Thailand	Another unlikely candidate in the list is, of course, Thailand. Who would've thought that the country would even be in the list? Yet, according to our research, approximately 2.5% of cyber attacks originate from Thailand.
#8	Russia	We bet that Russia is the one country you would've expected to see at the top of the list, but that's not the case. In 2021, Russian cybercriminals have allegedly caused only slightly more than 2% of the global cyberthreats. Surprising, isn't it?
#9	Indonesia	A country amongst the last in the list is Indonesia – the attacks that have originated from Indonesia allegedly caused approximately 2.3 to 2.4% of global cyberattacks.
#10	The Netherlands	Cyberattacks originating from the Netherlands have been the cause of approximately 2.2% of global cyberattacks.

Data Breach Search Engines

You might be surprised by the fact that in some cases, unethical data breach search engines (not BreachDirectory!) help cyber criminals to complete their tasks too. Unethical data breach search engines don't last long – however, they can do a lot of harm. You see, instead of simply providing people with the information regarding their cybersecurity stance, such data breach search engines provide everyone with all of the details concerning an account – search for an email or a username and you will be provided with the IP address, password, geographical locations, possibly credit, debit cards, and other details concerning the specific user. Doesn't sound good, does it? That's the primary reason why such data breach search engines are very far from legal in the first place – and they get taken down shortly after they gain some publicity as well.

We can tell you this, though – the data breach search engine provided by BreachDirectory and the BreachDirectory API is used by prominent universities as well as companies furthering their cyber security stance, and individuals – if you make good use of it, be certain – your company and you will much less likely be a target for cybercrooks and script kiddies alike.

Are you surprised by some of the countries on this list? We certainly are! If some of the information provided in this blog surprised you, make sure to follow our blog for more updates in the future, and until next time!

Which Team Is Responsible for Debriefing After a Cyber Attack?

BreachDirectory — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 10:30:00 +0000

So, the company you work at had just figured out that a cyber attack had just occurred. You've probably heard about the attack from your team lead – and now you're figuring out what to do to contain the damage and fix the underlying issues. Before you go about fixing them, though, you might wonder – which team in the company will be responsible for doing the debriefing after a cyber attack?

For the sake of simplicity, let's assume the company is rather small (< 100 people) and the underlying structure within the company is something along those lines:

Management team
Software engineering team
Security team
Marketing team

Some companies might also have a support team, or a team of database administrators as well – the goals of these two teams would be to provide support for underlying issues within the product and (or) build out features or manage the underlying databases to ensure they're not causing problems. Either way, in many cases, everything would look like so:

Someone from the security or software engineering teams becomes aware of a possible attack on the infrastructure of the company.
The person that has become aware of the cyber attack informs his or her colleagues within the team.
The issue is escalated to management and the management team of the company is briefed about what has just occurred.
The management team gives directions on what to do.

After these initial steps have been completed, the first person in line to respond to such attacks or to be briefed would probably be the CSO or CISO – he would need accurate information in regards to the "scene" of the incident in order to evaluate it.

Once that's done and the parts of the application where an incident is likely to have occurred are identified, everything is likely to be forwarded to the security team.

Once the security team would possess this information, the security engineers would likely work together with software engineers on one main goal: working on the part of the application where an incident is likely to have occurred in order to make sure that the flaw that has been exploited doesn't take place ever again. In many (not all, but let's assume) cases the attack would be the direct result of a SQL injection vulnerability in the application being exploited – as such, the software engineering team would immediately look at any and all queries that are sent to the database and try their best to refine them such that the input provided by the user doesn't ever reach the database without being sanitized.

Once done, the software engineers would likely report back to the security engineers that would be responsible for the initial debriefing of the incident to management (after all, the approval of all of the decisions within the company is up to management as well.)

Debriefing After a Cyber Attack

Once the security engineers would possess information about the attack, they would go on and provide their initial debriefing to management. Here's what the debriefing would likely contain:

A brief explanation of the incident that is likely to have occurred.
Preliminary reasoning as to why the cyber attack was successful/unsuccessful.
If there's sufficient information to believe that the cyber attack was mounted successfully, a brief explanation of the procedures used to contain the incident.
A brief list of temporary preventative measures that have been taken (e.g. restricting access to parts of a website, etc.)
A summary of the incident.

Once the aforementioned information is in the hands of management, it would be up to them to decide what to do and how to act next. The management would likely elevate this issue to the CEO of the company and tell him what's happened – the CEO, on the other hand, would likely talk to the CISO and the security engineers as well, and then present a briefing of what has occurred in the meeting of the team (some teams meet daily, some weekly, some bi-weekly… it all depends on the company.) The briefing would likely not be long – the CEO would have a point to make that would be something along the lines of "the company cannot afford a data breach – we need to step up our game in the security space" and tell the software engineers in the company to write code according to the security standards outlined by OWASP or other vendors.

Depending on the size of the company, after the meeting, the security engineers would also likely have a word with the CEO or their team lead and would probably be encouraged to look for solutions in the security space that can keep them all safe from cyber attacks both now and in the future and to present them all to the team in the upcoming meeting.

Data Breach Search Engines

One of such solutions would very likely be data breach search engines such as the one provided by BreachDirectory – the security engineering team lead would likely be interested in the API functionalities provided by the data breach search engines since the data breach search engine itself would only let people search for one or a couple of accounts at a time.

Data breach search engine APIs are not all built equal too, though – some might allow people to run bulk searches by providing a text file with a list of accounts (see below), some might not, and some might not even search through all of the data breaches in the system at once.

The security team would need to compare their needs with the problems solved by the data breach search engine API capabilities and decide for themselves. In order to evaluate the capabilities posed by data breach search engine API solutions, the people in the team would likely turn to the documentation of the API. In BreachDirectory, the documentation looks like the following:

Image 1 - BreachDirectory API Documentation

The security engineers would need to weigh all „for" and „against" options when choosing what security solution to employ, and once they've chosen the API, they would most likely forward some information to software engineers that would then assist in implementing the data breach API into the company infrastructure.

As a result of the data breach API implementation, the company would have access to tens of billions of rows of breached data and the ability to scan through all of the data at once – such a piece of functionality would be very easy to implement into any application or website, then utilized for OSINT purposes or to inform customers once their account information is likely to be at risk.

The success of data breach search engines, though, would be directly dependent on the actions initially performed by security and software engineers within the company – if they've chosen correctly, there shouldn't be many issues!

Summary

The teams that would most likely be responsible for the initial debriefing after a cyber attack would be software engineers and security engineers that would forward information to the management team. The management team, on their behalf, would consult the CEO on what has been done and discuss the preventative measures that need to be taken – the CEO would likely forward the information to the CISO or back to the security engineers themselves and let them decide what security solution they need to employ to further the security of the company.

Many of the security engineers would elect to use data breach search engines and their API capabilities due to their powerful nature to scan through tens of billions of rows of data quickly and with ease, and then make the data breach API a part of the company for years to come therefore protecting it from threats of the present, and of the future alike.

If you've enjoyed reading this blog, make sure to explore more stories on our blog by visiting this link, share this blog with your friends if you've found it to be interesting, and until next time!

Does a VPN Make You Anonymous?

BreachDirectory — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Ever since VPNs were first used, a question has always arisen – do they make their users anonymous? That's what we're figuring out in this blog.

What Is a VPN?

A virtual private network, or VPN for short, is an arrangement of servers that mask your IP address. A Virtual Private Network encrypts all of the data and routes all of the traffic through secure servers in other countries or states hiding your true identity as a result.

The functionality of VPN services – hiding our true location – is very useful when we need to access services blocked in our country by pretending we are in another country, to access streaming services, or to play on different servers than usual (for example, to play with players from America rather than from the EU.)

Does a VPN Make You Anonymous?

As VPN appliances are more and more widely used to hide the IP addresses of people, a natural question might arise – does a VPN make its users anonymous? Well, yes and no. You see, the core premise of VPN networks is to hide the IP of their users, however, the VPN provider has logs of every bit of traffic that passes through them. Although there are quite a few VPN providers that claim to have "no log policies", some say that even though the traffic is encrypted, the providers can still see the website you're trying to access.

For some, it may not be a big deal – for others, though, it definitely is. You see, VPNs are not only loved by privacy enthusiasts but cybercrooks too – and they count on the privacy provided to them by a VPN almost daily. They also keep in mind that when a VPN provider is confronted legally, they may give in to the legal order from court, police, or whoever else, so they try their best to stay anonymous when performing their "activities" online. Some get away with it, some don't.

Other Ways to Stay Anonymous Online

Aside from a VPN, there are other ways to guard your privacy and stay anonymous while browsing the web. One of such ways is related to making use of data breach search engines – data breach search engines like the one provided by BreachDirectory will help you figure out whether your accounts (email addresses, usernames, domains, or IP addresses) are at risk of identity theft or not.

The BreachDirectory API, on the other hand, will help your company stay on top of the growing cyber threat landscape by providing you and your company with the ability to secure accounts one-by-one or by running bulk searches. Secure your employees, your team, and your customers with just a couple of button clicks:

Summary

Questions about whether VPNs make their users anonymous are always hot. The answer to such a question is plain and simple – while the VPN service you're using might appear to give you a veneer of anonymity, the VPN provider usually has logs of some traffic that passes through them, so VPN services aren't exactly 100% anonymous.

We hope you've enjoyed reading this blog and that it has been educational, stay around the BreachDirectory blog for more news in the cyber-space, and until next time!

What Is a Data Leak? How Does It Differ From a Data Breach?

BreachDirectory — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 13:00:00 +0000

In this blog, we talk about data breaches and data leaks a whole lot – we have explored the possibilities of Discord suffering a data breach a while back, we have told you how should you go about preventing data leaks, etc. In this blog, we will cover data leaks from a different point of view – we will tell you what they are in the first place. Let’s get started, shall we?

Data Leaks – What Are They?

Put simply, a data leak is an incident exposing sensitive data. To different people, sensitive data has different meanings, but for most, sensitive data is comprised of multiple data classes:

Email addresses
Usernames
IP addresses
Geographical locations
Credit card details
Other sensitive information.

If a data leak leaks only email addresses or usernames, it may not be very sensitive because there would be no associated passwords, locations, or credit card details – however, as you might have guessed, the more data classes are exposed, the more sensitive the data leak becomes.

Are Data Leaks Harmful?

Now that you know what a data leak is, a natural question might arise – are all data leaks harmful? And the answer is – everything depends on the nature of the data leak. Data leaks can be classified into three or four categories and they are:

Low severity data leaks – such data leaks may contain usernames of users that once played on RuneScape private servers, some such data leaks may also contain IP addresses of users, but such data leaks don’t usually involve passwords.
Neutral data leaks – with data leaks belonging to such a severity range, some harm can be done: think about the same example as with low severity data leaks: neutral severity data leaks may also involve passwords that would allow attackers to mount identity theft attacks.
Moderate-severity data leaks – data leaks in such a severity range may leak usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, and unhashed passwords or passwords hashed with a weak hashing algorithm. The vast majority of data leaks in this day and age fall in this category.
High-severity data leaks – such data leaks aren’t very frequent, and the most frequent victims of such data leaks are companies that deal with insurance records (think Experian and the like) or smaller banking firms.

Most data leaks fall within either the neutral or moderate severity range, however, no matter what range the data breach falls in, some damage can be done nonetheless: it might seem that data breaches falling within the low severity range aren’t very important for the attacker as they don’t contain much data, however, such thinking is usually wrong – most blackhat hackers collect data breaches, then use them as part of credential stuffing attacks. And credential stuffing attacks are where attackers are usually able to do the most damage – by reusing the usernames, emails, and passwords from an older data breach, they’re able to perform a data breach into another service.

Data Leaks vs. Data Breaches

Many people confuse data leaks with data breaches – a data breach occurs when a service gets broken into (i.e. hacked – a data breach is the result of a cyber attack), while a data leak often occurs unknowingly – say if an employee at a company X would have accidentally uploaded sensitive data to a server that is accessible by anyone, that’s a data leak.

That’s not to say that one type of attack is less dangerous than the other, though – far from it. Both data leaks and data breaches come with their own set of problems that are posed to security experts, developers, and decision-makers alike. The pain to the people involved is only one piece of the puzzle – after a data breach or a data leak is discovered, most of the work has to be performed by security engineers that then forward information to the decision-makers of the company (the board, the CEO, or both.) Data leaks are usually dealt with swiftly – companies usually go through these steps to plug the leaking hole:

A data leak is discovered. More often than not, the company usually discovers that the data leak was performed by a current or former employee of the company.
The source of the data leak is investigated, then the core problem is identified (e.g. was the data leak performed after a certain employee played with permissions too much? Was the data leak performed after someone loaded data into a publicly available cloud instance and forgot about it? Etc.)
The problem is squashed – if the source of the problem is an employee, he or she is most likely required to undergo checks of his or her knowledge in the information security front by completing a couple of assessments, if not, security engineers plug the hole.

Data breaches, on the other hand, are usually approached a little differently: they’re usually not discovered until some incident occurs (think credential stuffing or the like) or after customers complain they cannot log in due to the fact that somebody has changed their passwords.

The first step in such a scenario is, of course, to forward information about the incident to the security engineers at the company or the CSO itself, and then decide whether we need to hire a data breach forensic team to investigate the incident, and if not, how should we deal with it ourselves, and then finally to reset all of the passwords belonging to all of the users.

Dealing with Data Leaks and Data Breaches

The best way to deal with both data leaks and data breaches happening both now and about to happen in the future is by educating ourselves on what happened in the past and using that knowledge to shape the future of a more secure web – and data breach search engines like BreachDirectory can help you do just that: not only will BreachDirectory provide you with a data breach search engine that is able to tell you what information of yours (an email, a username, an IP, or a domain) might be at risk of identity theft and allow you to swiftly change your passwords so you’re no longer at risk, but the BreachDirectory API will also provide an API capability to help you integrate data into your own company to assist your employees with OSINT-related tasks.

The API documentation will walk you through on how to use the API no matter what kind of plan you might be using – the API is a fit for all use cases from small single-user projects to larger enterprise appliances with its bulk API capability.

Here’s how the API documentation looks like:

the BreachDirectory API Documentation

Give the API a try today!

Summary

Data leaks and data breaches are frequent sources of confusion – a data leak usually happens when someone discloses sensitive information that shouldn’t be disclosed on accident, while a data breach happens with a clear purpose to harm – in most cases, it’s the direct result of a cyberattack.

We can protect ourselves from both data leaks and data breaches by utilizing data breach search engines such as the one provided by BreachDirectory to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our employees – we hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this blog, come back to the BreachDirectory blog to learn more in the future, and until next time!

Staying Cyber Safe on Christmas

BreachDirectory — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 10:30:00 +0000

As Christmas is just around the corner, making sure we’re all staying cyber-safe is immensely important. In this blog, we will walk you through the things you need to do to ensure the security of yourself, your devices, and your closest ones on the holidays.

Things to Consider

First off, cyber security and safety is not the same to all people. While some people may consider being “cyber safe” if they use a password manager to log in to websites while Christmas shopping, some may understand cyber safety differently – managers of software teams would be most concerned about keeping their employees informed about the threats that they might face when working, security engineers would be concerned about the software going down, keeping software up to date, and ensuring the integrity of backups, etc.

We will go through the list of things that are important to different people.

Christmas Cyber Safety for Shoppers

Most of us that aren’t in the cyber security industry, think about cyber security as a way to protect ourselves from malicious parties when performing Christmas shopping. Here are a couple of tips to help protect yourself and your most precious data when doing so:

Prepare a list of websites you will be shopping on beforehand. Aside from checking on the delivery dates of certain items and their prices, check whether the website is being used by many people (i.e. whether it’s trusted), and on its basic security measures – whether it’s using SSL (you should see a padlock near the URL), whether it’s design is pleasurable to the eye (good design is usually a very good indicator of the website’s performance in other areas), and if possible, take a look at the website’s ratings on TrustPilot.
If you receive suspicious-looking SMS or email messages (messages like “click here if you want to upgrade X”, “click here for a discount when shopping for X on Christmas, etc.”), it’s best to ignore them. Be aware of phishing – phishing campaigns usually become stronger around the holidays and tend to die down afterwards.
If you must create an account to buy a product, ensure that the password for the account is unique (password managers help with this immensely), and you might also want to consider signing up with an email that looks something like “youremail+websitename” to filter out all of the emails coming from the shop in your email inbox. Signing up with such an email alias routs all of the emails to “youremail”, but since you’ve signed up with the “+websitename” added to your email address, you will know from where the possible spam is coming from. Easy and useful!

Christmas Cyber Safety for Software Engineers

Software engineers usually look at cyber security from a different perspective, and that’s understandable – after all, working with software is their day-to-day job. Many software engineers would probably already have a couple of plugins running within their browser to stay safe, some of them might be aware of the capabilities provided by password managers and use them to generate secure passwords when shopping, some of them may be aware of data leaks and data breaches that have impacted them in the past – as such, providing advice to them is a little different than providing it to cyber-unaware shoppers.

Many software engineers, as well as cyber security professionals, turn their gaze towards cyber security-enhancing tools such as 1Password or LastPass for password management, proxy and VPN solutions to hide their IP address for anonymity and security when shopping, and the BreachDirectory data breach search engine and API capability to better protect their data in the future. Such tools help them shoot a couple of rabbits with one shot:

Password managers like 1Password, LastPass, and the like help them generate strong and secure passwords when buying items for their loved ones.
By making use of VPN solutions, they are able to purchase items on open, unsecured VPN networks (that may be an option if all other Wi-Fi networks are with a password) and make use of the benefits provided by VPN networks as well as keep being anonymous if that’s important to them.
Data breach search engines like the one provided by BreachDirectory help them figure out whether they’re at risk of identity theft and if so, provide them with valuable advice in regard to what they should do next. Such data breach engines are also able to inform people once their account appears in a data breach in the future and suggest when people should change their passwords.
Data breach search engine API solutions like the BreachDirectory API help individuals, universities, and companies better secure their applications and projects by providing a venue to conduct OSINT operations. By utilizing the data found in data leaks and data breaches, people can be more easily informed about the threats posed to their applications and improve their security stance.

Christmas Cyber Safety for Security Engineers

Security engineers are in a very similar line of work to that of software developers – to stay cyber-safe during Christmas, most of them also employ software solutions that help them shop safely (password managers and VPN solutions come into mind), but the whole picture looks different to them as they tend to look deeper. Aside from the aforementioned things, they also look at the following aspects:

Phishing – many security engineers have plugins within their browsers or have configured their email clients in such a way that detects and informs them about a possible phishing message. As cyber experts are knowledgeable about the things happening in the industry, they also educate themselves on the types of phishing (general phishing, spear phishing, whaling, etc.) and most of them also know how to act in certain scenarios. As such, more frequent phishing campaigns during Christmas time don’t bother them very much – they either ignore emails, calls, and messages that look suspicious, or know how to act to not fall victim to attacks.
Ransomware – every security engineer knows what ransomware can do, so they keep their computers and servers updated in order to not fall victim to ransomware attacks now or in the future. Protection from ransomware is especially important around Christmas – there are many applications that aim to infect computers and servers, lock up their data and demand a ransom, and since people are being asked to pay with bitcoin (BTC) or other cryptocurrencies, attackers are usually able to remain anonymous and there are no guarantees that the data will be unlocked after payment.
Human error – most security engineers working at good companies are tasked with issuing monthly, quarterly, or annual security updates to other team members, meaning that they prepare cyber security training for other, less cyber-experienced colleagues within the company, ensure that the code of the application is strenuously tested, protected with a firewall and can withstand attacks, and do other things to avoid human error. As such, they’re well prepared to respond to cyber attacks targeting them – and avoid human errors as a result.

Christmas Cyber Safety for Managers and Other People

Those who manage software, marketing, or other teams within a company generally are also well-versed in a couple of cyber-security concepts. In many cases, their knowledge is sufficient to protect against basic threats in cyberspace, but they might need some guidance when protecting themselves during Christmas time. While phishing might be familiar to the majority of managers within a wide sphere of companies, not all managers might be aware of the multiple types of phishing that can target a company, etc.

Same with people not falling in any of the aforementioned categories – as such, it’s recommended that they follow the latest developments in cyberspace, install a couple of privacy-preserving plugins into their browsers, and follow the advice given to them by security professionals. Making use of data breach search engines such as the one provided by BreachDirectory will also help them immensely.

Summary

In this blog, we have walked you through a couple of measures that you can employ to stay safe around Christmas time. The holidays are full of cheer – don’t let cybercriminals take it away from you! We hope that this blog post has provided you with some valuable information that you can employ to stay safe, stay around the blog for more information on combatting cybercrime, and until next time!

How to Prepare For a Cyber Attack?

BreachDirectory — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 17:00:00 +0000

In these times when cyber attacks happen more and more frequently, being adequately prepared for them is crucial. It's the job of security experts to secure our most precious data from cyber attacks like data breaches and consequential identity theft – however, it's up to us to adequately prepare both ourselves and our systems for a possible attack. We have to be prepared because we never know when attackers might strike and what they target first.

Preparing For an Attack – Prerequisites

To adequately prepare ourselves and our applications for an attack, we first have to answer a couple of questions:

What application are we protecting?
What is the application built on? What programming languages are in use?
How many users does the application have? Are we selling a product to them?
If we're selling anything, what are we selling? Is our product a software-as-a-service (SaaS) item? Do we have paying customers? How many?
What data does the application store?
Did we have prior experience with cyber attacks?

These are just a couple of questions we need to consider to craft a cyber attack preparation plan. You see, the answers to these questions are vital because when we know what we're protecting, how many users we have, and answer a couple of other questions, it would be way easier for us to plan our cyber security strategy because then we'll know where to turn.

Preparing For an Incident

Once we have answers to at least some of the aforementioned questions, we have the things that are vital to prepare for a cyberattack. Start from the top and move towards the bottom:

Remember the programming language the application is built on. Did we use any frameworks when building our app? Familiarize yourself with the threats that may apply to that framework.
Do we store data? What are we trying to achieve by storing data inside of our web application? Is all of it necessary? Try to minimize the amount of data that your application stores – the fewer data classes are stored by our web application, the better it is from a security perspective. Less data consumes less disk space as well!
Did we use any additional plugins or similar things when developing our application? Are all of them up to date? Make sure all of the plugins that are being used are an absolute necessity to complete the functionality offered by your web application and always keep them up to date to avoid any security flaws targeting them.
If the functionality of the application is to function as a SaaS provider, keep in mind that using payment gateways like the one provided by Stripe or other payment vendors will lessen our risk of being attacked on that front – the providers of these payment gateways have security in mind and it all saves us time too because we don't have to build out a payment functionality as well!
What industry are we serving? If we're serving an IT-related industry (software, cybersecurity, etc.), it's likely that our application would see an increased number of cyberattacks as time goes on, however, if we're simply running an e-commerce store, the number of potential cyberattacks is likely to be drastically lower.
Do we have any prior experience with cyber attacks? Prior experience tells us more than we could imagine – did the problem get delegated to the security crew of our company? Did the CEO of our company hire a team of forensic experts to look at the problem? Chances are that we learned from the things that happened in the past – remember the conclusions that were made at the end of the day and learn from them.

If you're a security expert working at a company, also consider the option of conducting a company-wide cyber security assessment to assess the stance of the company on the cyber front: paying for an assessment will always be cheaper than paying for a data breach. Some companies also conduct cybersecurity-related training and train all employees on the threats that they might face when doing their job (they're taught how to identify phishing emails, familiarize themselves with a couple of cybersecurity concepts, etc.)

Completing cybersecurity training improves the stance of every company making employees ready to respond to the majority of the threats that might target the company or themselves.

Other Options

Preparing for a cyber attack won't be the same without looking into the incidents that have occurred in the past – data breach archives and search engines like BreachDirectory can help us identify not only what data breaches have already happened and what we can learn from them, but also let us quickly and easily check whether we're at risk of identity theft. Input your email, username, IP address, or domain inside of the data breach search engine and not even a second later get a response whether you're at risk or not:

Make use of the data breach search engine and BreachDirectory's ability to inform you once your account appears in a future data breach to protect yourself – on the other hand, if you're running a company, the BreachDirectory API capability can be immensely useful when completing OSINT-related tasks and implementing data breach data into a part of your website to protect your clients.

Whatever the case, make use of the things that have happened in the past to protect your future.

Summary

In this blog, we've walked you through a couple of steps that you must consider to be adequately prepared for a cyber attack. Make sure you have answers to at least some of the aforementioned questions and evaluate your options on the cyber front to stay safe from cyber attacks both now and in the future. We hope you've enjoyed reading this blog, stay tuned for more news on the cyber front, and until next time!

Steam Account Hacked? Here's What to Do!

BreachDirectory — Sat, 03 Dec 2022 16:00:00 +0000

Accounts getting hacked is nothing new. Every other day we hear about some website being breached and its data getting leaked on the web - and data breach search engines like BreachDirectory exist for precisely this reason - they aim to help people avoid getting caught up in the mess of identity theft. In this blog, we're going to help you figure out what to do if you think that your Steam account is hacked.

What is Steam?

For many, Steam is the ultimate go-to gaming platform that was created in September 2003. The platform acts as an online video game distribution service and the service is widely known for being one of the largest digital distribution platforms for gamers.

The service is known to offer sales every once in a while with massive discounts - one of the largest sales of Steam is the summer sale, but the service is also known for its other sales such as the winter sale and the autumn sale.

Steam is a massive platform - according to backlinko, the number of approximate users using it is in the realm of 120 million.

Steam Security Measures

Of course, with such numbers of users, Steam has to have pretty stringent security measures in place to avoid getting breached. One of the most popular and easy to configure options is the Steam Guard - the Steam Guard is a 2FA appliance to ensure the security of their users: whenever a username and password is specified, the Steam Guard asks the user to confirm his identity by forwarding a code to his phone.

The Steam Guard was initially presented in a conference back in 2011 by the CEO of Steam, Gabe Newell. Steam is sure that the security of their users would be ensured when using the security measure to such a length that Gabe Newell even announced that people can try to log in to his account and gave is username and password away at the same conference, however, attacks still happen, so we still need to be aware of the measures we can take to protect ourselves.

How to Protect Your Steam Account?

In order to protect your Steam account, there are not that many things you can do. All of the things you can do pretty much boil down to one fact: you need to employ two-factor authentification on everything that is associated with your Steam account. When Steam suspects that somebody else is trying to log in to your account, it either sends a message to your email address asking to confirm your identity or sends you a Steam authenticator message with a code that you need to provide to be logged in to the platform.

All Steam accounts have an email associated with them, so we will start from there:

If you find yourself using Google, head over to the "My Account" panel and click on the Security tab on the left:

The Google Security Tab

Next, under the "Signing in to Google" heading, find the "2-Step Verification" option and click on it:

The Google 2-Step Verification Option

Now set up two-factor authentification:

Setting Up 2-Step Verification

Your email is now protected with two-factor authentication! Now, when logging in to your email address and successfully providing your email and password, you will be prompted for an additional code that is going to be sent to your phone via SMS.

Moving on to Steam, setting up the Mobile Authenticator is rather easy: install the app on App Store if you're using an iPhone or download an APK if you're using Android, then log in to your Steam account on your phone (you might need to confirm your identity via email because Steam won't recognize the location you're using to log in), and set up Steam Guard. First, set up the Authenticator:

Adding the Steam Guard to Your Account - Adding the Authenticator

Now, confirm your phone number:

Confirming Your Phone Number

Then finish up setting up Steam Guard by confirming your phone number. You're now done - the next time you log in to Steam, you will be asked for additional confirmation of your identity via Steam Guard. If Steam Guard isn't in place and Steam finds that you log in from a different place than usual, you will be asked to input a code that will be provided to you via email.

Got Hacked? Here's What to Do

Even though the Steam Guard mobile authenticator should be a good preventative measure against identity theft, there still are things how people can get around these security measures and breach your account - the most frequent occurence is people betting that the Steam account is not protected by the mobile authenticator, then gaining access to your inbox, and using credential stuffing or similar attacks to gain access to your Steam account.

If you've reused your password and you don't use either Steam Guard or 2 Factor Authentication provided by either Google or Steam you're in trouble - but there are still things you can do to get out of this mess. Start by checking the following:

Was your password changed? If so, proceed to step #3. If not, proceed to step #2.
If your password remains unchanged but you did have the alert of something suspicious happening on your account either via Steam or via Google, change your password immediately (use a password you didn't use anywhere else that was preferably generated by a password manager), then check whether the attacker has done damage: investigate sent and received messages via gmail, check your trade offers via Steam, and check the list of sent and received messages on Steam as well to see if you find anything suspicious.
If your password was changed, contact Steam support and provide them all of the information that you can remember that can be relevant to your account including what email is the account associated with, what games did you buy, what transaction methods did you use when buying them, what IP did you use when registering for Steam or buying access to games, what was the last time you've played a game on that account and what game was played, what items are no longer in your inventory, etc.: the more information is provided, the higher odds of Steam reinstating your account. You have to prove that you're the owner of the account, so have an ID ready as well, just in case.

If you're unlucky enough to have your password changed but follow the step #3, remember the necessary information and forward it to Steam when asked, you should be out of trouble. If your password wasn't changed, and you've completed all of the steps to better protect yourself in the future (you're not reusing passwords anywhere, you've checked all of the trade offers and declined all of the suspicious-looking ones, and you've double-checked all of the messages sent to your friends to see if you find anything suspicious), you should be good to go as well.

Other Things to Do

Completing the aforementioned steps is a good start to ensure the safety and security of your Steam account - however, it might not be enough. Attackers are always advancing and moving forward, so using other measures in combination with the ones already defined is a good start as well.

Consider using data breach search engines like BreachDirectory to ensure that your account is not at risk of identity theft - if it is, change the password on that app, and if the password is reused for any kind of a reason, change the password on that app as well.

At the end of the day, the security of your Steam account is directly dependent on the actions you've took previously and continue to take to secure it - data breach search engines like BreachDirectory help you get out of the data breach mess and provide a way to implement their data into other systems via the BreachDirectory API as well no matter if your account was already a victim of an identity theft attack or not - if it was, you will be able to identify the source of the attack, and if it wasn't, you will be able to better protect yourself in the future.

Summary

Noone likes getting hacked - however, as far as Steam is concerned, the platform certainly provides reliable ways for people to stay safe. One of the most prevalent ways to protect your Steam accounts is by using the Steam Guard mobile authenticator - the authenticator provides a way to get codes to a mobile phone whenever we're logging in to our Steam accounts: it's safe and convenient to use.

Even when Steam Guard isn't in use, Steam is still ensuring the security of our accounts by sending messages to our email addresses and asking for confirmation of our identities thus still allowing us to use the platform, albeit with restricted features (e.g. trading restrictions, etc.)

If you do get hacked, follow the steps outlined in this article, run a search through data breach search engines like BreachDirectory to ensure you stay safe, and until next time!

Alternatives to YouTube & TikTok

BreachDirectory — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 04:00:00 +0000

Alternatives to YouTube & TikTok

YouTube & TikTok are some of the most widely used video platforms in the
world -- YouTube was created on 2005 February 14, while TikTok was
created back in September 2016 and hit the scene a couple of years
later. In this blog, we walk you through the alternatives to these two
popular video platforms.

What is YouTube & TikTok?

For most of you reading this blog, the answer to what these two
platforms are and what they do will be pretty obvious -- one platform is
a video-sharing service that allows all users to watch, like, share,
comment on videos and upload their own while TikTok is more known for
its ability to provide its users with an ability to create and quickly
share short videos in a mobile-suitable format of 1080x1920.

When people use YouTube, they're looking for all sorts of things from
tutorials to trailers of certain movies whereas when they use TikTok,
they're mostly simply looking for a distraction for a couple of minutes
to get through their day.

Both platforms are unique in that they provide their users with the
ability to create and share content that has different formats and
captures the interest of different audiences.

Alternatives to YouTube & TikTok

Here are a couple of alternatives to both video-uploading services:

A frequent alternative to YouTube is Dailymotion which was amongst the first platforms to offer videos in 720p or Vimeo which is famous for providing services for both free and paid customers and for their tools suitable for video creation, editing, and other things as well as Facebook Watch or Twitter Video where users can watch videos without leaving these social media platforms.
An alternative to TikTok on the other hand would be Instagram which is one of the most famous free social media platforms used to share photos and videos with your social circle, as well as Dubsmash which is known for its ability to provide users with selfie-like videos.
Users also use Clash which was formerly known as Vine – it’s known as a video platform offering its users to gain “sustainable support” in regards to following, engagement, and money flow.

A frequent alternative to TikTok is obviously YouTube Shorts, and the same is true vice versa as well. YouTube Shorts were created as a direct alternative to TikTok -- we presume because YouTube has noticed its growth.

Each of the aforementioned alternatives to YouTube and TikTok have their
own upsides and downsides -- we hope that you've enjoyed reading this
blog and it provided you with some information you didn't know before,
stick around and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more
interesting blogs, and until next time!