Europol confidential documents were displayed online when an employee of the service took them with him on a USB that he opened with the computer of his home.
The Dutch Zembla reveals that the leak was not caused by external sources but by a Europol employee who violated the policy of the service 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, they are also included information for various attacks, such as the one in Madrid, but also for 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 accesss that was connected to the Internet.
Europol confirmed the leak, saying it was caused by human error. According to the service, an internal one has already started research which will reveal exactly what happened.
"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 its strict internal better safety, but no service can be safe from human errors like this.
