Search engine with millions of hacked Dutch passwords online

A search engine showing 1.4 billion of leaked or hacked passwords, including those of some 3.3 million Dutch, is officially online. On Gotcha.pw Dutch people can now check whether their password was stolen by searching for their email address. If there is a leaked password associated with that email address, the site shows the first two characters of the password, NU.nl reports.

You can also search domain names on the site. In this way organizations can see which of their employees' email addresses and passwords are on the street. Passwords from the National Coordinator for Counter-terrorism and Security, among others, can be found on the site, according to the newspaper. It is not clear whether these are old or current passwords.

The Gotcha.pw site administrator collected these passwords from previous data leaks and bundled them into a search engine. Such search engines have existed for some time. The Dutch police offer a similar service, and people can also use Have I Been Pwned to find out if their password is not safe.

The arrival of the Gotcha.pw search engine was announced with great fanfare last week - in a front page story on AD. The search engine was online for a short time last week Friday, but was taken down again. It initially showed the full hacked password, which is illegal. The administrator therefore adjusted the site to only show the first two letters of the passwords, according to NU.nl.