- 1.5 billion exposed records have been discovered by researchers
- Records are primarily from Chinese social media and e-commerce platforms
- Victims are at risk of identity theft and social manipulation attacks
Researchers from CyberNews have discovered an unprotected server with ‘hundreds of millions’ of records, including brands from big brands like Weibo and DiDi, among many others – with the total number of compressed records potentially at 1.5 billion.
The compromised data included personally identifiable information (PII), such as full names, email addresses, financial information, health records and phone numbers. The largest set of information was credited to QQ messenger, and the second largest was 504 million records credited to social media giant Weibo – although it’s likely these were from earlier leaks.
The largest data set with no known previous major leaks was from JD.com (Jingdong), a Chinese e-commerce company, where the researchers discovered a staggering 142 million JD.com records in the case.
No clear indication of ownership
While some data was apparently exposed in previous data leaks, much of the information was “undoubtedly” compromised for the first time in this incident. This dataset is most likely a mix of known exposed information and newly leaked data that was all aggregated to one (now closed) Elasticsearch server.
According to researchers, the server had been exposed for ‘several months’ but was shut down after several disclosure notices.
The exposed case shows ‘no clear indication of its true ownership’, which researchers point out suggests there may be malicious intent behind the compilation of such a ‘large and diverse’ data set.
A broad data set gives threat actors a wide opportunity to carry out targeted attacks such as account hacking, sophisticated social engineering attacks and identity theft.
While the scale of the incident is huge, it is potentially only the second data breach of this scale in recent memory, highlighting the need for greater protection for businesses everywhere.
