PassKnight
A Russian-language password checker: send it a password and it rates the strength, flags weak patterns like birthdays or keyboard walks, and checks it against 14+ billion breached passwords via k-Anonymity — the full password never leaves your device.
Key features
- Checks a password against 14B+ breached passwords via k-Anonymity (HIBP)
- Rates password strength on a five-dot scale
- Flags weak patterns — birthdays, names, keyboard walks, repeated characters
- Suggests strengthened variants (leetspeak, separators, mixed case)
What PassKnight does
PassKnightBot, titled "PassKnight — check a password for security" on its own Telegram profile, is a small but unusually well-documented open-source project by a developer identified as Iskander (GitHub handle demureiskander). Send it a password and it does three things: checks it against the Have I Been Pwned "Pwned Passwords" corpus of more than 14 billion breached credentials, rates its overall strength on a five-dot scale based on entropy and pattern analysis, and calls out specific weaknesses — birthdays, real names, keyboard walks like "qwerty," repeated characters — before suggesting strengthened variants using techniques like leetspeak substitution or added separators.
The privacy design matches the best practice in this category: the bot's own documentation states plainly that the password "never leaves your device in plain text," because only the first five characters of a locally computed SHA-1 hash are sent to the breach-checking API — the k-Anonymity method used by haveibeenpwned.com itself. Passwords are stated to never be stored or logged, and the source code is public specifically so that claim can be checked rather than taken on trust.
It is a genuinely tiny project — one named developer, built on a modern stack (Python, aiogram, Railway), and updated as recently as the week before this review, a good freshness signal for a security tool. There is an optional Telegram Stars tip jar for supporting the developer, but the core password check itself is free. As with any unofficial security bot, there is no independent audit beyond reading the code yourself, so treat results as a helpful signal rather than a certified guarantee.
How to start
- Open @PassKnightBot in Telegram and send /start
- Send a password you actually use when prompted
- Review the strength rating and any breach match
- Use a suggested strengthened variant or change the password if it was found in a breach
Pricing and limits
Free
Pros / Cons
- Named developer and public source code — unusually transparent for this category
- k-Anonymity design means the full password is never transmitted
- Actively maintained — code updated within the week before this review
- Free core functionality, Stars tip is optional
- Interface is Russian-only, no confirmed English toggle
- Very small project with limited track record and no press coverage found
- No formal privacy policy beyond the claims stated in the README
Score breakdown
| Criterion | Weight | Points | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Functionality | 25 | 7 / 10 | |
| Reliability & speed | 15 | 6 / 10 | |
| Popularity & trust | 15 | 3 / 10 | |
| Price & free tier | 10 | 10 / 10 | |
| Usability | 10 | 7 / 10 | |
| Safety & privacy | 10 | 8 / 10 | |
| Freshness | 5 | 8 / 10 | |
| Localization | 5 | 8 / 10 | |
| No intrusive ads | 5 | 9 / 10 | |
| Score | 100 | 68.0 |
Alternatives
All alternatives →
Have I been pwned?Send your own email address and it tells you whether that address has surfaced in a known data breach — a…
LeakCheckThe Telegram bot of LeakCheck.io, a commercial breach-data search company operating since 2018 — check your…
Have I been leaked?A minimal "check your email against known leaks" bot triggered with /pwn3d — its Telegram profile carries…FAQ
Does it ever send my full password anywhere?
No — per its open-source code, only the first five characters of a SHA-1 hash computed from the password are sent to the breach-checking API; the password itself stays on your side.
Is this an official Have I Been Pwned product?
No, it is an independent open-source bot built on top of the public Have I Been Pwned "Pwned Passwords" API, made by a developer using the handle Iskander.
Technical details
- Inline mode
- Mini App
- Works in groups
- Works in channels
- Accepts voice
- Accepts files
- Requires phone number
- Requires registration
- Shows ads
- Works in Russia without VPN