high severity June 20, 2024 · 3 min read

Z-lib Data Breach (2024)

If you are a customer of Z-lib, here’s what’s now in circulation.

In June 2024, almost 10M user records from Z-lib were discovered exposed online. Now defunct, Z-lib was a malicious clone of Z-Library, a well-known shadow online platform for pirating books and academic papers. The exposed data included usernames, email addresses, countries of residence, Bitcoin and Monero cryptocurrency wallet addresses, purchases and bcrypt password hashes.

On June 20, 2024, 9.7 million Z-lib user records appeared in a public data breach notification, confirming that usernames, email addresses, countries of residence, cryptocurrency wallet addresses, purchase histories, and bcrypt-hashed passwords from the now-defunct shadow library service had been exposed.

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Reported Details from the Disclosure

The primary listing on Have I Been Pwned states that the breach occurred in June 2024 and affects nearly ten million accounts tied to a malicious clone of the original Z-Library piracy site. The exposed fields explicitly include email addresses, usernames, geographic locations, Bitcoin and Monero wallet addresses, purchase records, and bcrypt password hashes. The disclosure does not specify how the data was initially obtained or whether an extortion demand preceded the leak. Because Z-lib operated as an unauthorized mirror of the well-known book-piracy platform, many users accessed it with credentials they also used on legitimate services, amplifying the risk.

Why This Matters for You and Your Family

If you or anyone in your household ever created an account on a Z-lib domain, your email address and password hash are now public. Even though the passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes, determined attackers can still attempt to crack weaker ones offline. More immediately dangerous are the cryptocurrency wallet addresses and purchase histories that can be tied directly to your identity. A single leaked wallet address lets threat actors trace every transaction on the public blockchain, revealing balances, other addresses you control, and sometimes real-world identities when those wallets interact with exchanges. Geographic location data further narrows the pool of possible victims, making targeted phishing, SIM-swapping, or physical threats more practical.

Children or teenagers in your home who used the same email address for both academic piracy and gaming accounts face compounded risk. A breach like this rarely stays isolated; one set of credentials can unlock multiple services and begin an identity chain that leads straight to your front door.

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What the free scan actually returns

Sample resultyou@email.comIllustrative — not a real person

Found on people-search siteswe remove these

These listings are live, public, and legal to remove — and removing them is what we do.

value redacted in this sampleage, relatives, address historySpokeo

value redacted in this samplephone, household, property recordsBeenVerified

value redacted in this sample582 companies checked

Found in breach recordsverifiedreported — unverified

Each record is labeled: confirmed breach data, or an attacker’s claim no one has verified.

verifiedvalue redacted in this samplepassword + phone · 2024telecom breach

unverifiedvalue redacted in this sampleclaimed in ransomware listing · 2026leak-site claim

Leaked data cannot be deleted from the internet — anyone claiming otherwise is lying. Broker listings can be removed. We do the second, and show you exactly what to fix from the first.

Report details & sourcing

Severity High contact details only, none of them permanent

Disclosed June 20, 2024

Last reviewed July 22, 2026

Affected 9.7M

Data exposed Cryptocurrency wallet addressesEmail addressesGeographic locationsPasswordsPurchasesUsernames

By GalaxyWarden Threat Research · Editorial & sourcing standards

Editorial & sourcing policy

GalaxyWarden is a breach-monitoring service and news aggregator. We do not exfiltrate, host, purchase, or redistribute stolen data. Breach information is compiled from publicly accessible sources and threat-intelligence platforms, and is reported as claims attributed to their source. We promptly correct or remove material shown to be inaccurate — see our content & takedown policy or write to support@galaxywarden.com.

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