All news in category “Incidents and Data Breaches”

🔓 UpGuard identified an Amazon S3 bucket tied to iPR Software that publicly exposed over a terabyte of files, including a 17 GB MongoDB backup. The collection contained 477,000 media contacts, approximately 35,000 hashed passwords, client marketing assets, internal PR strategy documents, and credentials for Google, Twitter, and a MongoDB host. UpGuard notified iPR in October 2019; public access was removed in late November after follow-up and media engagement.

🛡️ UpGuard analyst Chris Vickery discovered a publicly exposed S3 file repository containing credentials and SSH keys tied to systems used by US geospatial intelligence contractors. The plaintext data included access tokens and administrative credentials that could enable entry to systems handling Top Secret-level data. NGA secured the bucket rapidly after notification; Booz Allen Hamilton responded later. UpGuard preserved the dataset at government request.

📂 UpGuard's analysis of exposed development repositories from AggregateIQ details source code, backups, and credentials tied to multiple pro-Brexit organizations. The findings show WordPress backups, API keys, Stripe secrets, and scripts used to build and contact supporter lists, with administrative accounts linking AIQ staff to sites such as Vote Leave, Change Britain, and the DUP. Misuse of the exposed assets could have allowed large-scale data access or payment compromise.

🔓 The UpGuard Cyber Risk Team discovered a publicly accessible Amazon S3 bucket that contained detailed configuration spreadsheets appearing to describe GoDaddy infrastructure running in the AWS cloud. The files included over 24,000 hostnames and 41 configuration fields per system, plus modeled financials and apparent AWS discounting—information useful for targeted attacks or competitive intelligence. GoDaddy closed the exposure after notification; no credentials were found, but the incident highlights the severe consequences of cloud misconfiguration at scale.

🔒 A misconfigured Amazon S3 repository administered by NICE Systems exposed names, addresses, account details and PINs tied to Verizon customers; UpGuard estimated up to 14 million affected while Verizon disputed a 6 million figure. The publicly accessible bucket contained daily voice-log files and large text archives with unmasked fields such as PIN and CustCode, alongside call analytics metadata. UpGuard notified Verizon in June 2017 and remediation followed, but the incident underscores the severity of third-party cloud misconfigurations and vendor-managed data risk.

🔓UpGuard discovered 111 GB of internal customer records from National Credit Federation stored in a publicly accessible Amazon S3 bucket, including names, addresses, dates of birth, scanned driver’s licenses and Social Security cards, full bank and credit card numbers, and complete credit reports. The repository contained personalized credit blueprints and videos showing employee access. UpGuard notified the company, which promptly secured the bucket. The case highlights the need for rigorous cloud permission controls and continuous configuration monitoring.

🔎 The UpGuard Cyber Risk Team details a public discovery of AggregateIQ repositories that exposed sophisticated political targeting tools. The report highlights project families Monarch and Saga, describing ad-scraping scripts, pixel trackers, and ingestion services that link Facebook ad activity to web behavior. Exposed credentials and AWS assets amplify privacy and oversight concerns.

🔓 On September 27, 2017, UpGuard researcher Chris Vickery discovered an Amazon S3 bucket at the AWS subdomain "inscom" that was publicly accessible and contained 47 entries with three downloadable files. One download, an .ova virtual appliance named "ssdev," included a virtual hard drive with partitions and metadata labeled Top Secret and NOFORN. The exposed assets also contained private keys, hashed passwords, a ReadMe referencing the Pentagon cloud project Red Disk, and a classification-training snapshot. UpGuard notified INSCOM and the repository was promptly secured.

🔓 On August 28, 2018 the UpGuard Cyber Risk team discovered a publicly readable Amazon S3 bucket named tppcf containing roughly 2GB of campaign files belonging to the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund (TPPCF). The data included call lists with full names and phone numbers for about 527,000 individuals, along with strategy documents, call scripts, and marketing assets. UpGuard notified TPPCF on October 1; permissions were briefly set to allow global authenticated users and then removed by October 5. The incident illustrates how cloud misconfiguration can expose sensitive political microtargeting data and create significant privacy risks.

📧 A targeted phishing campaign compromised an aviation executive’s Microsoft 365 credentials, allowing attackers to mine past invoice conversations and send convincing fake invoice requests to customers. Within hours the fraudsters registered a near‑identical domain and at least one customer paid a six‑figure phony invoice. Investigation links the registration details to a long‑running Nigerian BEC ring identified as SilverTerrier; firms are urged to combine employee training, domain monitoring and rapid use of the Financial Fraud Kill Chain to improve recovery chances.

🔒 Google has filed a lawsuit in New York federal court targeting the operators of the BadBox 2.0 botnet, which compromised over 10 million uncertified devices running the Android Open Source Project. In partnership with HUMAN Security and Trend Micro, Google’s Ad Traffic Quality team identified preinstalled malware used for large-scale ad fraud and other illicit activity. Google updated Play Protect to automatically block BadBox-associated apps and is coordinating with the FBI to further disrupt the criminal operation.

🔓 UpGuard disclosed that Accenture left four Amazon S3 buckets publicly accessible, exposing sensitive Accenture Cloud Platform data including API keys, certificates, plaintext passwords, and private keys. The buckets — labeled acp-deployment, acpcollector, acp-software, and acp-ssl — contained credentials, VPN keys, logs, and large database dumps that included client information. After discovery on September 17, 2017, UpGuard notified Accenture and the buckets were secured the following day. This incident underscores how misconfigured cloud storage can endanger both vendors and their customers.

🔓 This UpGuard report describes a publicly accessible Amazon S3 data warehouse owned by Deep Root Analytics that contained 1.1 TB of unsecured files and linked datasets from Data Trust and TargetPoint. The exposed records included personally identifiable information for up to 198 million US voters alongside modeled political attributes and scoring. UpGuard discovered the bucket on June 12, 2017; Deep Root secured it after notification, and the report details discovery, contents, and implications for election data privacy.

⚠️ The UpGuard Cyber Risk Team discovered a publicly accessible rsync repository belonging to Texas-based Power Quality Engineering (PQE) that exposed sensitive electrical infrastructure data for clients including Dell, Oracle, and Texas Instruments. Up to 205 GB of reports, schematics, infrared imagery and a plaintext file of internal passwords were downloadable. The exposure, discovered on July 6, 2017 and remediated after notification, illustrates vendor risk and misconfigured services. Recommended mitigations included restricting rsync access, enforcing authentication and network ACLs, and implementing continuous vendor monitoring.

🔒 An UpGuard researcher discovered three publicly accessible Amazon S3 buckets tied to Attunity, a data integration vendor now part of Qlik. One bucket contained a sampled terabyte of backups, including roughly 750 GB of compressed email archives and OneDrive backups with system credentials, project documents, client lists, and employee PII. The researcher notified the vendor on May 16, 2019, and public access was removed the following day. The incident highlights how backup misconfigurations can expose credentials and sensitive corporate and customer data.

🔓 UpGuard's Cyber Risk Team discovered an exposed rsync repository tied to subsidiaries of Blue Chair LLC, including Target Direct Marketing, that revealed PII for over one million individuals seeking higher education information. The publicly accessible server included daily MySQL backups and website files, with names, emails, phone numbers and education-related lead fields. The exposure resulted from an rsync misconfiguration and highlights the need for strong vendor risk controls, data retention policies and restricted backup access.

🔓 UpGuard's Data Breach Research team discovered and secured a publicly accessible rsync storage server containing data belonging to the Oklahoma Department of Securities. The exposure included approximately 3 TB and millions of files spanning 1986–2016, including email archives, virtual machine images, system credentials, and personal records. UpGuard identified the host via Shodan, notified state officials, and public access was removed the same day.

🔒 UpGuard discovered and secured a 1.7 TB publicly accessible storage repository that contained detailed documentation of telecommunications infrastructure across Russia, including schematics, administrative credentials, email archives and photographs. The dataset, hosted on an rsync server, appears to relate primarily to projects by Nokia and carrier MTS. Files included installation instructions and images for SORM interception hardware, raising significant operational and national-security risks. UpGuard notified Nokia and access was closed within days.

🔒 UpGuard discovered an Amazon S3 bucket at the subdomain 'alteryxdownload' that was misconfigured to allow any AWS 'Authenticated Users' to download its contents. The repository included Alteryx software and a 36 GB ConsumerView dataset from Experian containing 123 million household records and 248 fields. A separate file held public 2010 US Census data. Alteryx secured the bucket after notification, underscoring vendor and cloud configuration risk.

🔒Two exposed third-party Facebook app datasets were discovered publicly accessible, including a 146 GB dump from Cultura Colectiva containing over 540 million records of comments, likes, reactions, account names and Facebook IDs. A separate At the Pool backup held profile fields and plaintext passwords for roughly 22,000 users. Both data sets resided in publicly readable Amazon S3 buckets, illustrating how misconfigured storage and long-lived third-party copies of user data create persistent leakage risk.