1.5 bn sensitive documents on open internet: researchers

Some 1.5 billion sensitive online files, from pay stubs to medical scans to patent applications, are visible on the open internet, security researchers said today.

Researchers from the cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows said a scanning tool used in the first three months of 2018 found mountains of private data online from people and companies across the world.

The unprotected data amounted to some 12 petabytes, or four thousand times larger than the "Panama Papers" document trove which exposed potential corruption in dozens of countries.

"These are files that are freely available" to anyone with minimal technical knowledge, said Rick Holland, a vice president at Digital Shadows.

Holland told AFP his team scanned the web and found unsecured files, adding "we didn't authenticate to anything."
The researchers said in the report that even amid growing concerns about hackers attacking sensitive data, "we aren't focusing on our external digital footprints and the data that is already publicly available via misconfigured cloud storage, file exchange protocols, and file sharing services."