- Cybernews found exposed database of tens of thousands of French citizens
- Data combined from at least five breaches: voter, health, financial, CRM and vehicle information
- Probably built by criminal data broker; pose high risks of phishing, fraud and identity theft
Someone – most likely a cybercriminal – combined data stolen in at least five breaches into a single, large database and then exposed it on a cloud server, experts have warned.
The database was recently discovered by security researchers at Cyber newswho notified the server’s owners and helped remove the archive.
Cybernews said it found a database of “millions” of French citizens exposed on the open web for an unknown period of time. After analyzing the contents of the database, the researcher determined that the archive is most likely an amalgamation of at least five fractures.
Serious privacy risks
In total, there were “tens of millions” of records, Cybernews concluded, breaking down the information discovered thus:
- More than 23 million records appear to be voter or demographic register data containing full names, addresses and dates of birth
- About 9.2 million health data in the format of France’s official RPPS/ADELI registers
- More than 6 million contact records from a CRM
- Approximately 6 million financial profiles with IBAN and BIC, linked to French banks
- Vehicle registration and insurance information
“Unlike traditional leaks caused by corporate misconfigurations, this exposure appears to be the work of a data broker or criminal collector. Such actors often merge stolen data sets from multiple breaches into unified databases to increase resale value and enable identity cross-linking,” the team explained.
“The mix of data sets paints a worrying picture: different sectors, one repository – and no protection. The incident poses a serious privacy risk to millions of French citizens.”
Cyber news were unable to identify who the real owner of the database is, but they traced it to a server in France and helped lock it down.
These types of databases are extremely valuable to cyber criminals as they enable various attack techniques including phishing, identity theft, wire fraud and more.
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