- ADFW 2025 revealed 700+ passport and ID scans of high profile attendees
- The leak included documents by David Cameron, Anthony Scaramucci, Alan Howard and Binance’s Richard Teng
- Misconfigured third-party vendor database secured upon discovery; no evidence of malicious access
Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW) has allegedly leaked super-sensitive information about its attendees, including hundreds of high-profile individuals.
Organized by Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) under the patronage of senior UAE leadership, the event is a major financial industry event which brings together global leaders in finance, investment, politics, technology and markets.
But according to a new Financial Times report, ADFW maintained a public, non-password-protected database containing scans of more than 700 passports and government identity cards.
No evidence of exploitation
The database was discovered by freelance security researcher and consultant Roni Suchowski, and among the people whose passports were leaked are American investor and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, former British prime minister David Cameron and hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard.
Other high-profile figures named in their report include Richard Teng, co-head of crypto exchange Binance, who is also the former CEO of Abu Dhabi’s ADGM, and Lucie Berger, the EU’s ambassador to the UAE.
The report claims that more than 35,000 people attended the event, which would mean that only a small portion of the visitors had their data leaked. So far, none of the people mentioned in the reports have commented on the leak.
speaks to PakinomistADFW said it addressed “a vulnerability in a third-party vendor managed storage environment related to a limited subset of ADFW 2025 participants.”
“The environment was secured immediately upon identification and our initial review indicates that access activity was limited to the researcher who identified the issue,” ADFW added. In other words, hackers didn’t find the database until the researcher did.
Misconfigured databases remain the leading cause of data leakage across the Internet.
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