- Cybernews found an exposed database with tens of millions of records of French citizens
- Combined data from at least five breaches: voter information, healthcare, finance, CRM, and vehicle information.
- Probably created by a criminal data broker; poses significant risks of phishing, fraud and identity theft
Someone, probably a cybercriminal, has combined data stolen in at least five attacks into a single large database and then exposed it on a cloud server, experts warned.
The database was recently discovered by security researchers in cyber newswho notified the server owners and helped remove the file.
Cybernews said it found a database on “millions” of French citizens exposed on the open web for an unknown period of time. After analyzing the contents of the database, the investigator determined that the file was most likely a combination of at least five violations.
Serious privacy risks
In total, there were “tens of millions” of records, Cybernews concluded, breaking down the information discovered as follows:
- More than 23 million entries that appear to be demographic or voter registration data, containing full names, addresses, and dates of birth.
- Approximately 9.2 million health data, in the format of official French RPPS/ADELI records
- More than 6 million contact records from a CRM
- Approximately 6 million financial profiles with IBAN and BIC, linked to French banks
- Vehicle registration and insurance information.
“Unlike traditional breaches caused by corporate misconfigurations, this exposure appears to be the work of a data broker or criminal collector. These actors often merge stolen data sets from multiple breaches into unified databases to increase resale value and enable cross-referencing of identities,” the team explained.
“The combination of data sets paints a worrying picture: different sectors, one repository and no protection. The incident poses a serious privacy risk for millions of French citizens.”
cyber news They couldn’t identify who the real owner of the database is, but they traced it to a server in France and helped block it.
These types of databases are extremely valuable to cybercriminals as they enable different attack techniques, including phishing, identity theft, wire fraud, and more.
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