Confidential Europol documents were exposed online when an employee of the agency took them with him on a USB stick he opened with him computer of his house.
The Dutch Zembla reveals that leakage was not caused by external sources, but by a Europol employee who violated the agency's policy and took confidential data with him.
So more than 700 secret pages from Europol's servers are currently on the Internet and include hundreds of names and phone numbers belonging to natural persons involved in terrorist investigations.
According to Ars, it also includes information on various attacks, such as that in Madrid, but also on cases that have not been made public.
The Dutch source claims all files were left unencrypted on a storage device connected to a computer without a password access that was connected to the Internet.
Europol confirmed the leak, and said it was caused by a human error. According to the service, an internal investigation has already begun to reveal what happened exactly.
"The former employee, who is an experienced police officer from a national authority, obtained Europol data on a private storage device while still working in Europol clearly violating his service policy," Europol spokesman Jan Op Gen Oorth said. .
"A security investigation into this case is already underway development, in coordination with the respective authorities at national level.”
At present, it is not yet known whether and how many people were able to access these documents, but given the confidential nature of the leaked information, it is very clear that similar leaks should be prevented in the future.
Europol is known for rigorous internal security, but no service can be safe from human mistakes like this.