https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/when-sharin
g-is-not-caring-over-1-5-billion-files-exposed-through-misco
nfigured-services/

When Sharing Is Not Caring: Over 1.5 Billion Files Exposed
Through Misconfigured Services
April 5, 2018
Michael Marriott

Our recent report "Too Much Information", discovered over
1.5 billion files from a host of services, including Amazon
S3 buckets, rsync, SMB, FTP, NAS drives, and misconfigured
websites.

We love data, and we need ways to store, share and transfer
this data to other individuals and parties. There are a
range of services that are used to do this, and one way that
has gained popularity over the last few years is cloud
storage, specifically Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
buckets. Unfortunately, many administrators misconfigure
these S3 buckets rendering the contents publicly-accessible.
Barely a month goes by without another open S3 bucket being
discovered who remembers the data of 198 million voters
being exposed last year?

However, S3 buckets are not alone. In our research we found
that they only constituted seven percent (7%) of the exposed
files we found. Many other services that are used to store,
share, or transfer data are also frequently misconfigured:

File Transfer Protocol (A network protocol used to
transfer computer files);
rsync (A way of transferring and synchronizing files);
Server Message Block (A network file sharing protocol);
Network-attached storage devices (Devices often used to
backup home computers).

Combined, these services expose over 1.5 billion files, with
SMB, rsync and FTP accounting for 33, 28, and 26 percent
respectively.

What's the damage?

The amount of exposed data is staggering. Over twelve
petabytes of data is exposed (12,000 terabytes). For
context, this is over four thousand times larger than the
"Panama Papers" leak (2.6 terabytes). It's also 12 thousand
times larger than the Deep Root exposure of 198 million
voters in 2017. Almost all countries are affected, but the
United States experienced the most exposure with 239,607,590
files.

Types of Exposed Data

It's not just the volume but the sensitivity of the data
that is a major cause for concern. There were a number of
instances of high severity exposure of personal information,
intellectual property, and security assessments.

There is an incredible amount of personal data exposed,
including payroll, tax return and healthcare information. If
we consider how much is exposed (the news that the data of
87 million Facebook users may have been harvested is a good
example), this adds significantly to this already rich trove
of data, providing more and more information that could be
used for malicious purposes such as social engineering and
fraud. Furthermore, with GDPR fast-approaching, there are
clear regulatory concerns for organizations surrounding the
protection of personal data, particularly if employees and
contractors are copying and archiving work files using cloud
storage and NAS solutions.

Our report also highlights numerous cases of intellectual
property that is also exposed through these services. In one
instance, a technology company providing Electronic Medical
Records software had their copyright application and full
source code publicly-available. In another instance, an
energy company had sensitive details and diagrams of their
patent-pending technology exposed. Loss of intellectual
property can also have considerable financial and
reputational impacts.

Finally, there were a worrying number of security
assessments made available. This includes thousands of
penetration tests, network diagrams, and security audits. We
found a series of security documents belonging to a leading
European supplier of electronic identification services used
within the banking industry. These files contained in-depth
security assessments, source code testing results, and
vulnerability scanning reports that revealed details on
insecure servers. These infrastructure reports exposed
server locations and hosting IPs, missing software patches,
port information, CVE numbers, and vulnerability
descriptions that may allow an attacker to modify data,
inject malicious code, or perform man-in-the-middle attacks.
This type of information is a goldmine for attackers
targeting organizations, and an attacker will typically
spend weeks, if not a couple of months performing
reconnaissance on their targets to glean this exact type of
information.

Download a copy of our report to learn more about the types
of sensitive data these services are exposing, and how you
can help to reduce this problem.

Posted on: def3.i2p

The link was taken down.
Posted on: def3.i2p

Link seems ok here.

https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/when-sharing-is-not-caring-over-1-5-billion-files-exposed-through-misconfigured-services/

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