- Cybernews found exposed Kibana instance on adult website Frivol.com
- 479,000 user emails leaked, including some corporate addresses
- The company denied the breach, but exposed data poses extortion and phishing risks
Amateur adult content site Frivol.com kept a Kibana instance available on the world wide web, available to anyone who knew where to look.
The flaw was recently discovered by security researchers from Cyber newswho analyzed it and found it contained 479,000 user email addresses.
After reaching out to Frivol, a Spanish company targeting the German-speaking community, the company denied being breached and claimed the leaked data was worthless.
Work emails
“No customer data was stored in the affected system. At no point was there any risk of a data leak. Only insignificant log data was affected,” the company representative said.
However, the insignificance of having exposed emails is up for debate, as this is not your average data leak – these emails were used to register an account on an adult website. There is a lot of shame and stigma attached to the porn industry, and cybercriminals know very well how to exploit it.
To make matters worse, it appears that some people have used their work email addresses to register these accounts. This was probably done to hide the activity from spouses and family members, but it opens the door to extortion under the threat of notifying employers. A tarnished corporate image hurts just as much.
“The incident highlights how vulnerable even the smallest amount of personal data can become if not handled properly by the company, as well as the importance of separating personal and professional online activity and assessing one’s digital footprint.” Cyber news noted researchers.
After discovering the occurrence and attributing it to Frivol, the researchers reached out to the company, which without acknowledgment quickly locked it down.
Right now, there is no evidence that the data was discovered by threat actors or used in phishing or sextortion campaigns.
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