Breach Database / Civil Online

Yes — Civil Online was breached.

What happened

In mid-2011, data was allegedly obtained from the Chinese engineering website known as Civil Online and contained 7.8M accounts. Whilst there is evidence that the data is legitimate, due to the difficulty of emphatically verifying the Chinese breach it has been flagged as "unverified". The data in the breach contains email and IP addresses, user names and MD5 password hashes. Read more about Chinese data breaches in Have I Been Pwned.

What data was exposed

What to do right now

  1. Change your password for this service now. And change it anywhere you reused the same password — attackers try leaked passwords on other sites within hours ("credential stuffing").
  2. Turn on two-factor authentication. Even a leaked password is useless against an account protected by a second factor. Prefer an authenticator app over SMS.
  3. Expect convincing phishing emails. Attackers use breached details to write personalized emails. Be suspicious of any message referencing this service.
  4. Check your other accounts on Have I Been Pwned. Your email address may appear in other breaches you don't know about yet.
  5. Monitor the apps you use going forward. Clearly watches the breach record for the companies behind your apps and alerts you the moment one appears.

Breach data from Have I Been Pwned. Listing here means the service appears in the public breach record — not that your personal data was affected.