An investigation by Cybernews revealed a publicly available instance of Elasticsearch that contained a staggering amount of private data belonging to individuals in Brazil.
Elasticsearch is a widely used tool for searching, analyzing and visualizing large volumes of data. The leaked data was not linked to a specific company or organization, preventing Cybernews from identifying the source of the leak.
In the cluster located on the cloud server, the data was along with full names, dates of birth, gender and Registration of individuals (CPF) numbers. This 11-digit number identifies taxpayers in Brazil.
The leaked data contained more than 223 million records, meaning that the entire population of Brazil could have been affected by the data breach.
While the data is no longer publicly available, in the hands of bad actors it would have been possible to misuse it for the purposes of identity theft, fraud and targeted cybercrime. This could have resulted in financial losses, unauthorized access to personal accounts and other serious consequences for those affected.
Cybernews recently reported that huge amounts of leaked data purporting to belong to government agencies are being sold online.
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2024-01-13 08:15:00
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