The popular resource helping people with managing breached passwords, Have I Been Pwned, brings some interesting updates. At first, Troy Hunt has announced making HIBP open source. Secondly, the FBI has pledged to officially share all pwned passwords with HIBP.
HIBP Goes Open Source
In a recent post, Troy Hunt, the founder of “Have I Been Pwned” has announced the changes in the service.
As revealed, HIBP will be available as open-source via the .NET Foundation. It’s an independent non-profit organization supporting the open-source ecosystem around the .NET framework.
Stating about the significance of this move, about Hunt already hinted months ago, the post reads,
It’s now an important part of many online services and this move ensures that anybody can run their own Pwned Passwords instance if they so choose.
FBI To Share Data With HIBP
Alongside making the HIBP code open-source, another major update to the service adding more credibility to it is its collaboration with the FBI.
Specifically, the FBI will be directly adding the pwned passwords they come across into the HIBP database. This will further broaden the scope of HIBP. Plus, it’ll also facilitate quickly updating the HIBP database with pwned passwords. In turn, it will help users stay informed about more breached passwords in a short time.
About this collaboration, Bryan A. Vorndran, Assistant Director, Cyber Division, FBI, provided the following statement to Troy Hunt.
We are excited to be partnering with HIBP on this important project to protect victims of online credential theft. It is another example of how important public/private partnerships are in the fight against cybercrime.
This collaboration that will give another entity the ability to update the database of pwned passwords, together with making the service open source, requires some code writing. Hunt has shared the details of the planned steps the code should power.
Together with all this, the .NET Foundation and Cloudflare will continue supporting the project as required.