Thanks to the work of the security researcher Jeremiah Fowlerit was possible to locate a database online, containing the data of over 300,000 taxi passengers residents of the United Kingdom and Ireland.
This huge archive of information, owned by the company Cabbage, was not adequately protected and what was stored inside was in fact accessible to anyone. iCabbi is a Dublin-based transport company which, in its database, stores sensitive personal data, such as nomi, e-mail e telephone number of customers.
In fact, you didn’t even need to be a hacker to access the content. The archives contained a huge number of email addresses relating to services such as Yahoo and Gmail, as well as some particular email boxes, linked to BBC, university e government agencies.
Names, emails and phone numbers of 300,000 taxi passengers released online
Once the flaw was discovered, Fowler immediately notified iCabbi who, in less than a day, remedied it by limiting access to the archives. Despite this, the potential damage of this inattention can cost the names in the database very dearly.
The company’s official statement arrived shortly after, with a representative admitting that it was a human error and that, following what happened, iCabbi is interacting with its customers to warn them of the violation.
This case, however, is not unique. Just think about what happened to Microsoft recently, with a database regarding the data of its employees and customers without any type of protection. Even more disturbing is the recent case of the database of 2FA codes exposed to the public, with associated risks for millions and millions of potential victims, given that the affected platform managed access to platforms such as Facebook, TikTok e Google.