INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A security researcher recently discovered an unsecured database online which contained the personal information of 1.2bn users including
their social media accounts, email addresses and phone numbers.A majority of the data contained in the database was collected by a company
called People Data Labs according to the CEO of Night Lion Security, Vinny Troia who first discovered it last month. People Data Labs
provides its customers with easy access to work emails and social media account details of over 70 percent of the decision makers in the US,
The company scrapes this data from various sources online and on its website, People Data Labs explains that it can even deliver this data
straight to its customers, saying:“A dataset of resume, contact, social, and demographic information for over 1.5 Billion unique
individuals, delivered to you at the scale you need it
With just a few lines of code, you can begin enriching anywhere from dozens to billions of records with over 150 data points
If you don’t have the time, we can deliver the data straight to you via S3, SFTP, Google Drive, Elasticsearch.”The unprotected data was
found on a Google Cloud server and while it was originally sourced by People Data Labs, one of the company's customers was responsible for
leaving it unsecured.The company's co-founder and CEO, Sean Thorne explained that some of the exposed data did come from it though he
suspects that it was aggregated by another firm which was merging various data points.Vinny Troia was conducting a routine scan for
unprotected data online when he made the discovery of the four terabyte database, after which he notified the FBI
Troia explained that the information contained in this latest data dump could easily be leveraged by cybercriminals, saying:“This is the
first time ever that I’ve seen emails, names and numbers linked with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Github profiles all in one spot
There are no passwords related to this data, but having a new, fresh set of passwords isn’t that exciting anymore
Having all of this social media stuff in one place is a useful weapon and investigative tool.”Via Bloomberg
