Why a Pen Tester Built Breachsense

Breachsense was founded in 2018 by Josh Amishav, a penetration tester with nearly 20 years of experience conducting offensive security engagements for financial institutions and government agencies worldwide.

During retests, Josh noticed a pattern. Clients would patch the critical vulnerabilities we’d found, like SQL injection, Stored XSS, or server misconfigurations. But we could still get in. Leaked credentials let us walk right through the front door, bypassing every security control they had in place.

Organizations had no visibility into their exposed credentials. They’d spend months hardening their infrastructure while attackers could simply log in with credentials leaked from third-party breaches.

Josh has led security research and development teams. He’s contributed code and research to major open source security projects including Nessus, Nmap, the OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS), the OWASP AppSensor Project, and the WASC Threat Classification project. He’s also taught tactical defense training at Black Hat USA.

Josh’s security expertise has been cited by Entrepreneur, HubSpot, Compliance Week, and SANS Institute. Breachsense research has been referenced by Kaspersky, Check Point Research, Security Magazine, and Aon. See the full list on our media and citations page.

Connect with Josh on LinkedIn.

Breachsense was born from a simple observation during pen tests. Leaked credentials let us bypass firewalls, WAFs, and login pages. The credentials weren’t stolen from our clients directly. They came from third-party breaches, infostealer malware, and combo lists traded on hacker forums.

Rather than waiting for attackers to exploit these credentials, we built Breachsense to detect them first. We monitor infostealer logs from malware-infected devices, combo lists from credential stuffing attacks, and third-party data breaches. You get fast alerts when your users’ credentials, session tokens, or data appear on the dark web.

Our Mission

Our mission is to prevent account fraud by detecting leaked data before attackers exploit it.

Breachsense protects financial institutions, government agencies, and Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

We serve three primary customer types:

Enterprise Security Teams: Get fast alerts when employee credentials appear in stealer logs, combo lists, or third-party breaches. Reset passwords or revoke session tokens before they’re exploited.

MSSPs and Security Consultants: Monitor multiple clients from a single platform. You can access third-party breach data without requiring clients to make DNS or HTTP changes.

Penetration Testers and Red Teams: Use the same credential intelligence that attackers exploit during engagements. Test realistic attack scenarios including privilege escalation and MFA bypass.

What makes Breachsense different? We crack hashed passwords so defenders can check if a leaked password is still in use. This reduces false positives. We don’t just tell you a breach happened. We give you the data to determine if it matters.

Our API integrates with virtually any SIEM, application, or security tool. We’re a small team, which means you get direct access to people who built the platform. No tiered support queues. No tickets routed to Level 1 technicians who read from scripts.

We maintain the industry’s largest collection of breached credentials.

For a complete overview of our platform capabilities, data sources, and use cases, see the Breachsense facts page.

Trusted by enterprise security teams
PwC Trustwave Teachers Mutual Bank Swire Shipping Defense.com

Frequently Asked Questions

Breachsense was founded in 2018 by Josh Amishav, a pen tester with nearly 20 years of offensive security experience. Josh has conducted red team engagements for financial institutions and government agencies worldwide. He’s contributed to major open source security projects including Nessus, Nmap, and the OWASP Core Rule Set.
Breachsense was built by penetration testers who understand how attackers exploit credentials. We crack hashed passwords to reduce false positives. By comparing plaintext passwords, you’ll know if a leaked password is still in use. Our platform monitors infostealer logs, combo lists, and third-party breaches in real-time. Dark web monitoring covers sources that basic breach databases miss. Plus, you get direct access to our team for support.
We serve enterprise security teams, managed security service providers (MSSPs), and penetration testers. Security teams use Breachsense to detect compromised credentials before attackers exploit them. MSSPs monitor multiple clients from a single platform. Pen testers use our credential intelligence during authorized engagements.
Verified security consultants and MSSPs can monitor third-party cyber risk without asking clients to modify DNS records or make HTTP configuration changes. You can detect when your clients’ data appears in vendor breaches or supply chain compromises. This makes it easy to provide breach monitoring as a service.
Our Dark Web API is RESTful and well-documented, making integration straightforward. You can connect Breachsense to your SIEM, ticketing system, or security orchestration platform in minutes. Most customers complete their first integration in under an hour.
We monitor compromised credentials from infostealer malware, combo lists used in credential stuffing attacks, and third-party data breaches. This includes usernames, passwords, email addresses, session tokens, and authentication cookies. We track data from dark web markets, hacker forums, ransomware gang leak sites, and paste sites where attackers share stolen credentials.