“It keeps happening because people commonly forget or they just think it’s private when it isn’t,” Pompompurin told ProPublica. Data exposure events, in which sensitive data is left sitting online, were responsible for cybersecurity incidents involving an estimated 164 million of the 294 million people victimized in 2021, according to the center.įor years, companies have been vowing to harden their electronic defenses as cybersecurity firms repeatedly warned them about the pitfalls of this form of laxity. Such incidents helped make 2021 a record year for data breaches, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center.
In recent years, it has included everything from names, emails and chat transcripts of users of a sex cam website to America’s secret terrorist watch list to a virtual hard drive from the federal government with sections classified as “ top secret.” The exposed data extends far beyond what can be found on RaidForums, ranging from the prosaic and useless to the ultravaluable. Pompompurin said he scans the web for such unguarded material and then leaks it on RaidForums “because I can and it’s fun.” Many times, it’s left in cloud storage folders available to anyone with internet access. Pompompurin told ProPublica that he often doesn’t need to do much hacking to get his hands on sensitive personal data. So says Pompompurin, a pseudonymous hacker who posted the millions of stolen records cited above on RaidForums, a discussion board popular with cybercriminals seeking personal data. In each case, the companies left the data exposed online with little or no security. They were the equivalent of grabbing jewels from the seat of an unlocked car parked in a high-crime neighborhood. But these breaches were far from “Ocean’s Eleven”-style operations. DonateĬybertheft conjures images of high-tech missions, with sophisticated hackers penetrating multiple layers of security systems to steal corporate data. Fact-based, independent journalism is needed now more than ever.
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