All news with #breach tag

Dutch prosecution hack disables multiple speed cameras

⚠️ The Netherlands' Public Prosecution Service (Openbaar Ministerie) disconnected its networks on July 17 after suspecting attackers had exploited Citrix device vulnerabilities, leaving several fixed, average and portable speed cameras unable to record offences. Internal email remained available, but external communications and documents required printing and postal delivery. Regulators including the National Cybersecurity Centre were informed, and prosecutors warned that ongoing downtime will delay cases and hamper road-safety enforcement while systems remain offline.

Langflow Misconfiguration Exposes Data of Pakistani Insurers

🔓 UpGuard secured a misconfigured Langflow instance that exposed data for roughly 97,000 insurance customers in Pakistan, including 945 individuals marked as politically exposed persons. The instance was used by Pakistan-based Workcycle Technologies to build AI chatbots for clients such as TPL Insurance and the Federal Board of Revenue. Exposed materials included PII, confidential business documents and credentials; access was removed after notification and UpGuard found no evidence of exploitation.

US Seizes $1.09M in Bitcoin From BlackSuit Gang Takedown

💰 The US Department of Justice announced it seized US $1,091,453 in cryptocurrency linked to the Russian-operated BlackSuit ransomware group following an international takedown of servers, domains and the gang's dark web extortion site. The recovered funds derive from a 49.3120227 Bitcoin ransom payment on or about April 4, 2023; that payment was originally worth US $1,445,454.86. Law enforcement partners in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Ireland and France collaborated on the operation that seized four servers and nine domains on July 24, and the frozen funds were identified after repeated deposits and withdrawals that ended with an exchange freeze in January 2024.

KrebsOnSecurity Featured in HBO Max 'Most Wanted' Series

📰 The HBO Max documentary Most Wanted: Teen Hacker features interviews with Brian Krebs and examines the criminal trajectory of Julius Kivimäki, a Finnish hacker convicted for extensive data breaches and later mass extortion. The four-part series traces his early role in the Lizard Squad, high-profile DDoS attacks, swatting incidents, and the Vastaamo psychotherapy breach and patient extortion. Directed by Sami Kieski and co-written by Joni Soila, episodes will stream weekly on Fridays throughout September.

TeaOnHer App Replicates Tea's Functionality and Breaches

🛡️ TeaOnHer, a recent iOS knock‑off of the controversial dating app Tea, has been found exposing sensitive user data. TechCrunch reported government IDs, driving licences and selfies accessible via a public web endpoint with no authentication, and the app appears to copy wording and features from the original. Newville Media did not respond to disclosure attempts, and an exposed admin credential pair was found on the company server. Until these failures are addressed, users should avoid Tea-related apps.

Thai Hospital Fined After Patient Records Used as Wrappers

📄 A Thai hospital was fined after more than 1,000 patient records, sent for destruction, were found being used as street-food wrappers for crispy crepes. Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Committee (PDPC) determined the documents leaked following handling by a contracted disposal firm that stored them at a private residence. The hospital was fined 1.21 million baht and the disposal business owner received a separate penalty. The episode highlights failures in secure disposal and vendor oversight.

AggregateIQ Exposure Reveals Canadian Campaign Assets

🔒 The UpGuard Cyber Risk Team discovered an unsecured AggregateIQ (AIQ) code repository containing site backups, API keys, SSL private keys, and other sensitive assets tied to multiple Canadian campaigns and parties. Exposed files included WordPress backups, donation processor keys (Stripe), NationBuilder tokens, and PEM private keys that could enable impersonation or account takeover. The findings illustrate significant third‑party vendor risk and raise regulatory and public‑interest concerns about how AggregateIQ managed client credentials and campaign tooling.

Misconfigured Amazon S3 Exposed Tea Party Campaign Data

🔓 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.

HCL Exposed New-Hire Passwords and Project Reports

🔓 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.

LA County 211 Data Exposure: Emergency Call Records

🔒 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.

Robotics Vendor Exposed Sensitive Manufacturing Data

🔓 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.

Public S3 Exposure Reveals Sensitive Customer Data at NCF

🔓 On October 3, 2017 UpGuard researcher Chris Vickery discovered a publicly accessible Amazon S3 bucket belonging to National Credit Federation containing 111 GB of internal and customer records. The repository included scanned IDs, Social Security card images, full credit reports from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, personalized credit blueprints, and full bank and card numbers. National Credit Federation secured the bucket after notification and UpGuard found no evidence of theft in this report. The case underscores the necessity of validating cloud storage permissions and continuously monitoring third-party risk.

Election Systems & Software Exposed 1.8M Chicago Voters

🔓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.

Medcall S3 Misconfiguration Exposed Medical Records

🔓 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.

LocalBlox S3 Misconfiguration Exposes 48M Records Publicly

🔓 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.

Marketing PR Platform Exposed Data of Hundreds of Thousands

🔓 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.

Open rsync Repository Exposes 42,000+ Patients' Records

🔒 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.

Spartan Technology S3 Exposure of South Carolina Arrests

🔒 UpGuard Research discovered a publicly accessible AWS S3 bucket containing roughly 60 GB of MSSQL backups uploaded by a Spartan Technology employee, exposing South Carolina justice-system records spanning 2008–2018. The dataset included about 5.2 million arrest-event rows, tens of millions of related records, and sensitive PII such as names, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and roughly 17,000 Social Security numbers. Permissions included the "AuthenticatedUsers" group, enabling broad access; Spartan removed public access the same day after notification.

Exposed NGA Data Linked to Booz Allen S3 Misconfiguration

🛡️ 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.

GoDaddy AWS Configuration Data Exposed in Public S3

🔓 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.