Data breaches → Qatar National Bank
Was your data in the Qatar National Bank breach?
2015 · qnb.com · ~88,678 accounts exposedCritical severity · 10/10
Qatar National Bank (qnb.com) suffered a data breach in 2015 that exposed around 88,678 accounts. If you had an account, some of your personal data may be circulating in leaked databases. The fastest way to know is to check your own email — free, in about 30 seconds, no password required.
What happened
In July 2015, the Qatar National Bank suffered a data breach which exposed 15k documents totalling 1.4GB and detailing more than 100k accounts with passwords and PINs. The incident was made public some 9 months later in April 2016 when the documents appeared publicly on a file sharing site. Analysis of the breached data suggests the attack began by exploiting a SQL injection flaw in the bank's website.
Breach details sourced from Have I Been Pwned, the industry-standard breach database. Risk analysis by Nullivo.
What was exposed, and why it matters
Not all breaches carry the same risk — what matters is which fields leaked. Here is what the Qatar National Bank breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Direct financial fraud, plus convincing scam calls that quote your real card or account details to establish trust.
The strongest identity-theft material there is — enough to open credit accounts or file fraudulent claims in your name.
Attackers replay leaked passwords across other sites (“credential stuffing”). Because most people reuse passwords, one leak often unlocks email, shopping and banking accounts elsewhere.
Home addresses feed people-search and data-broker sites, which republish them publicly. They also make phishing far more convincing and, in the worst cases, enable real-world harassment.
Account-recovery answers let an attacker reset your password without ever knowing it — bypassing an otherwise strong password.
Date of birth is a permanent identifier used to verify identity by phone. Combined with a name and address it is often enough to impersonate you.
Enables SIM-swap attacks (hijacking your number to intercept SMS codes), smishing, and voice scams that appear to come from your bank.
Reveals where you live, work or travel, which supports both targeted scams and physical-safety risks.
Links this leak to your other accounts — a reused username lets anyone build a profile of you across platforms.
Reveals your approximate location and internet provider, which adds credibility to targeted scams.
Also listed in this breach: Bank account numbers, Customer feedback, Dates of birth, Financial transactions, Genders, Geographic locations, Government issued IDs, IP addresses, Marital statuses, Names, Passwords, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, PINs, Security questions and answers, Spoken languages.
What to do if you were affected
These steps are ordered for this specific breach — the most urgent action given what leaked comes first.
- Payment or bank details: Contact your bank, ask them to monitor or reissue the card, and check statements for small “test” transactions.
- Government identifiers: Consider a credit freeze or fraud alert with the credit reference agencies, and watch for accounts you did not open.
- Passwords: Change this password everywhere you have reused it, starting with your email account — whoever controls your email can reset everything else.
- Home addresses: Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating.
- Security questions and answers: Change the answers on every account using them, and treat the answers as passwords (random strings stored in a password manager).
- Check whether your own email appears in this breach — run a free scan to confirm before you spend time on the steps above.
This breach put your details on data-broker sites
Because Qatar National Bank exposed home addresses, this is one of the breaches that feeds people-search and data-broker sites. Those sites scrape leaked databases, combine them with public records, and republish the result as a searchable profile — which is how a single breach turns into a permanent public listing. Removal works, but brokers typically re-list within about four months, so it has to be repeated.
See our broker-by-broker removal guides →
How urgent is this now?
This breach is over 11 years old. Old credentials still cause harm — leaked passwords from a decade ago are still tried against new accounts every day.
Passwords are the reason breach age matters less than people expect. Leaked credentials are compiled into wordlists that get tried against new services for years afterwards, so a password exposed here is unsafe to use anywhere, ever again.
Remember: a breach can't be "un-leaked" — once a database is out, it exists in countless copies. The goal is to make the leaked data useless: change what can be changed, lock down what can't, and remove what has been republished.
Frequently asked questions
What data was exposed in the Qatar National Bank breach?
The Qatar National Bank breach exposed payment or bank details, government identifiers, passwords, home addresses, security questions and answers, dates of birth, phone numbers, location data, names and usernames, ip addresses. Direct financial fraud, plus convincing scam calls that quote your real card or account details to establish trust.
How many people were affected by the Qatar National Bank breach?
Around 88,678 accounts were exposed, making it a smaller, more targeted breach.
What should I do if I had a Qatar National Bank account?
Contact your bank, ask them to monitor or reissue the card, and check statements for small “test” transactions. You can check whether your own email appears in this breach with a free Nullivo scan — no password required.
Breaches that exposed similar data
If the Qatar National Bank breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the JobStreet breach? (2012, ~3,883,455 accounts)
- Was your data in the VNG breach? (2015, ~24,853,850 accounts)
- Was your data in the Paidwork breach? (2026, ~23,272,765 accounts)
- Was your data in the Upstox breach? (2021, ~111,002 accounts)
- Was your data in the Exactis breach? (2018, ~131,577,763 accounts)
- Was your data in the eThekwini Municipality breach? (2016, ~81,830 accounts)