All news in category “Incidents and Data Breaches”

🔒 The UpGuard Cyber Risk team discovered a 73 GB dataset belonging to Washington ISP Pocket iNet publicly exposed in a misconfigured Amazon S3 bucket named pinapp2. The exposed files included plain text administrative passwords, AWS access keys, network diagrams, device configurations, inventories, and photographs of physical infrastructure. UpGuard notified Pocket iNet on discovery (October 11, 2018); the bucket remained exposed for seven days and was secured on October 19 after repeated contact. The incident highlights the dangers of storing secrets in public object storage and recommends using secrets managers, encryption, and hardened S3 ACLs.

🔓 UpGuard's Cyber Risk Team discovered an Amazon S3 bucket named "tigerswanresumes" that was publicly accessible, exposing 9,402 resumes and application documents submitted to TigerSwan. The files contained contact details, work histories, and sensitive identifiers — including passports, partial Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and 295 resumes claiming Top Secret/SCI clearances. UpGuard notified TigerSwan and followed up repeatedly; the bucket remained accessible for roughly a month before it was secured. TigerSwan said the exposure resulted from a former recruiting vendor.

🔒 The UpGuard Cyber Risk Team discovered a publicly exposed, misconfigured NAS belonging to the Maryland Joint Insurance Association (JIA) that contained backup customer and operational files. The repository included full Social Security numbers, bank account and check images, insurance policy data, and plaintext administrative credentials including remote access and third-party ISO ClaimSearch logins. UpGuard notified JIA on discovery; the exposure was secured and is no longer active.

🔓 UpGuard disclosed that an Amazon S3 bucket belonging to the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund (TPPCF) publicly exposed roughly 2GB of campaign materials and call lists. The files—largely PDFs and images from the 2016 election cycle—contained strategy documents, marketing assets, and call records listing full names, phone numbers and VoterIDs for about 527,000 individuals. Upon notification on October 1, 2018, TPPCF restricted bucket permissions within hours and removed access by October 5. The incident underscores how cloud misconfiguration can turn organizational data into a large-scale privacy breach with political implications.

🔓 Medico Inc. left an Amazon S3 bucket publicly accessible, exposing nearly 14,000 documents (approximately 1.7GB) that included medical records, insurance claims, legal files, and internal business data. The UpGuard Data Breach Research Team discovered the bucket on June 20, 2019, and Medico closed it within hours after notification. The dataset contained unredacted PII such as SSNs, bank account numbers, and payment card data, and also included plaintext credentials that could enable further compromise.

🔓The database of Omaha-based voting machine vendor Election Systems & Software was left publicly accessible on an Amazon S3 bucket, exposing records for 1.864 million Chicago voters. The exposed MSSQL backups included names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. UpGuard discovered the open bucket on Aug 11, 2017 and notified ES&S, which closed access the next day.

🔓 In May 2019 UpGuard researchers discovered publicly accessible HCL pages that exposed personal information, plaintext passwords for new hires, and detailed project reports. The data was dispersed across multiple subdomains and web UIs, including HR dashboards, recruiting approval panels, and a SmartManage reporting interface. After notifying HCL's Data Protection Officer, the researcher confirmed the anonymous-access pages were taken offline within days. The incident underscores the risk of misconfigured application pages and the importance of clear reporting channels and prompt incident response.

🔒 UpGuard discovered a public GitHub repository on 13 January 2020 containing an Amazon Web Services engineer’s personal identity documents and numerous system credentials. The repository included AWS key pairs (including a file named rootkey.csv), API tokens, private keys, passwords, logs, and customer-related templates. UpGuard reported the exposure to AWS Security within hours and the repository was secured the same day. The incident highlights how rapid leak detection can prevent accidental disclosures from escalating.

🔒 The UpGuard Cyber Risk Team discovered an Amazon S3 bucket for LA County 211 that was publicly accessible and contained Postgres backups and CSV exports with sensitive data. A 1.3GB t_contact export included millions of records, roughly 200,000 detailed call notes and 33,000 Social Security numbers, alongside 384 user accounts with MD5-hashed passwords. The exposure dated from 2010–2016; UpGuard notified the service in March–April 2018 and confirmed the bucket was closed within 24 hours of contact.

🔒 UpGuard researchers discovered on August 30, 2017 a publicly accessible Amazon S3 bucket named “mcs-puppet” containing seventy-two .tgz backup archives that included Puppet manifests, configuration files, keys, and credentials tied to Viacom. The repository exposed AWS access and secret keys, GPG decryption keys, and scripts referencing services such as Docker, Jenkins, Splunk, and New Relic. UpGuard notified Viacom on August 31, and the exposure was secured within hours. The incident demonstrates how cloud misconfigurations can reveal master provisioning controls and enable widespread infrastructure compromise.

🔓 UpGuard discovered an Amazon S3 bucket owned by LocalBlox that was publicly accessible, exposing a 1.2 TB ndjson archive containing approximately 48 million personal profiles. The dataset aggregated names, addresses, dates of birth, scraped LinkedIn and Facebook content, Twitter handles, and other identifiers used to build psychographic profiles. UpGuard notified LocalBlox and the bucket was secured on February 28, 2018. The incident highlights how a simple cloud misconfiguration can compromise consumer privacy and enable targeted influence at scale.

🔓 UpGuard disclosed that an unsecured Medcall Healthcare Advisors Amazon S3 bucket exposed roughly 7 GB of sensitive information, including PDF intake forms, CSV files containing full Social Security numbers, and 715 recorded patient-doctor and operator calls. The bucket was publicly readable and writable with an 'Everyone - Full Control' ACL and was taken offline after UpGuard notified Medcall. The case underscores the danger of vendor misconfiguration and third-party exposure of protected health information.

🔓 UpGuard’s Cyber Risk Team discovered a publicly accessible AWS S3 repository tied to Election Systems & Software (ES&S) that contained multiple backups and a 12 GB MSSQL database. The data set included about 1.864 million Chicago voter records with names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. The bucket, labeled “chicagodb,” was found on August 11, 2017; ES&S was notified and the exposure was secured by August 12, 2017. This incident highlights vendor misconfiguration risk and the need for rigorous vendor risk management and configuration checks.

🔓 Level One Robotics left 157 GB of sensitive customer, employee, and corporate files accessible via an unrestricted rsync server, exposing CAD drawings, factory layouts, robotic configurations, NDAs, identity documents, and banking records for over 100 manufacturing clients. UpGuard discovered the exposure on July 1, 2018 and began outreach on July 5; after contact on July 9, Level One remediated the server by July 10. The incident underscores third- and fourth-party supply-chain risk and the need to restrict file-transfer services by IP and authentication, enforce vendor security standards, and maintain rapid exposure-response procedures.

🔒 UpGuard researchers discovered a publicly accessible MongoDB database belonging to Neoclinical, exposing profiles for 37,170 users in Australia and New Zealand. Records included names, contact details, geocoordinates, dates of birth and structured health-screening answers that revealed diagnoses and treatments. UpGuard notified the company and AWS; access was removed on July 26. The exposure underscores the need for proper access controls and rapid incident response.

🔓 The UpGuard Cyber Team discovered a publicly accessible GitLab repository belonging to AggregateIQ that exposed code, tools, and credentials used in political data operations. The leak includes an apparent campaign platform called Ripon, state configuration files, voicemail scripts, and integrations for services like Twilio and Facebook. Exposed keys, tokens, and AWS credentials raise risks of misuse and highlight ties between AIQ and Cambridge Analytica that warrant further investigation.

🔓On October 11, 2018 UpGuard discovered that an Amazon S3 bucket named "pinapp2" exposed 73 GB of data belonging to Pocket iNet. The downloadable "tech" folder contained plaintext administrative passwords, AWS secret keys, network configuration files, inventory lists, and photographs of hardware and towers. Pocket iNet was notified the same day and secured the exposure on October 19, 2018. The incident highlights how misconfigured S3 ACLs and poor credential hygiene can place critical infrastructure at risk.

🔒 UpGuard discovered a publicly accessible rsync repository tied to Cohen Bergman Klepper Romano Mds PC that exposed records for more than 42,000 patients and over three million medical notes. The exposed data included patient and physician names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email and insurance information, along with an Outlook .pst and a virtual hard drive containing staff home addresses and family details. UpGuard notified the affected parties and Accenture, and the repository was secured after follow-up, underscoring failures in basic access controls and the need for faster remediation.

🔒 UpGuard’s Cyber Risk Research team discovered and secured a public GitHub exposure containing sensitive employee and customer data belonging to OneHalf, a business process outsourcing firm in the APAC region. The principal artifact was the HRIS project, including a 1.2MB database dump (hrisdb-02012018.sql) with detailed personal records for roughly 250 employees, extensive medical histories, emergency contacts, and 300 usernames with plaintext passwords. A related repo, ohserviceform, listed 28 client companies and plaintext banking account numbers, increasing the risk of financial fraud. UpGuard notified OneHalf and the repositories were secured by August 22, 2018.

🔍 AggregateIQ's public repository exposed sophisticated ad and tracking tools linked to political campaigns. The Saga suite automates Facebook ad scraping, performance reconciliation, and asset backup, while Monarch provides pixel-based tracking (Jewel, Peasant) and a microservice stack (Peon) for event ingestion and enrichment. The codebase included credentials and configs enabling fine-grained targeting, though working user datasets were not present. The exposure raises significant privacy and electoral concerns.