Privacy; Yeah right. Digital Shadows: leakage of 12 petabyte data

Digital Shadows, a company specializing in digital risk management analysis and information threat investigation. The company released today a which outlines the sheer scale of the leaks of sensitive business and consumer data.

"Ο όγκος των δεδομένων πρέπει να αποτελεί βασική αιτία ανησυχίας για κάθε οργάνωση που έχει συνείδηση ​​ασφάλειας και προστασίας της ιδιωτικής ζωής. Επιπλέον, με τη γρήγορη εφαρμογή του GDPR, θα υπάρχουν σαφείς ρυθμιστικές επιπτώσεις για κάθε οργανισμό που αποθηκεύει δεδομένα πολιτών της ΕΕ."

Digital Shadows

During the first three months of 2018, Digital Shadows researchers detected more than 1,5 billion (1,550,447,111) files available on open dupms services: Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), rsync, SMB servers, FTP servers, wrongly configured websites and Network Attached Storage (NAS) drives.

This number corresponds to over twelve petabytes (12.000 ) data. For those who didn't understand 12 peta of data is freely circulating on the internet. To give you an idea of ​​the magnitude, the number is over four thousand times larger than the 'Panama Papers' which reached 2,6 terabytes.

The most common data found to circulate were payroll records and tax returns (700.000 and 60.000 files respectively).

However, consumers are also at risk from 14.687 incidents of patient information leakage. In one case, the data included information from points of sale, where transactions were recorded, and some credit card information.

Interestingly though, although we would all expect most leaks to come from the wrong ones of Amazon S3, in Digital Shadows' study leaks from the service account for only 7% of exposed data discovered.

On the contrary, services such as SMB (33 percent), rsync (28 percent) and FTP (26 percent) contributed to the largest information report. These technologies may be old, but they are still widely used.

Στις διαρροές ανακαλύφθηκαν και πάρα πολύ ευαίσθητα δεδομένα, όπως μια περίληψη ευρεσιτεχνίας για ανανεώσιμη ενέργεια που χαρακτηριζόταν σαν "αυστηρά εμπιστευτική". Ένα άλλο παράδειγμα περιλαμβάνει ένα έγγραφο που περιέχει ιδιόκτητο πηγαίο κώδικα που υποβλήθηκε για κατοχύρωση πνευματικών δικαιωμάτων.

Rick Holland, head of the Digital Shadows Information Security, says:

"Ενώ συχνά προσπαθούμε να ανταποκριθούμε σε εισβολείς που εισέρχονται στο περιβάλλον μας και υποκλέπτουν τα δεδομένα μας, δεν επικεντρωνόμαστε στα εξωτερικά ψηφιακά μας αποτυπώματα και τα δεδομένα που είναι ήδη διαθέσιμα στο κοινό μέσω υπηρεσιών που δεν είναι ασφαλείς."

Read the entire Digital Shadows survey, from here.

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Written by giorgos

George still wonders what he's doing here ...

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