- Cybernews found exposed database with tens of millions of French citizen records
- Data combined from at least five breaches: voter, healthcare, financial, CRM, and vehicle info
- Likely built by criminal data broker; poses major risks of phishing, fraud, and identity theft
Someone – most likely a cybercriminal – has combined data stolen in at least five breaches into a single, large database, and then exposed it on a cloud server, experts have warned.
The database was recently discovered by security researchers at Cybernews, who notified the server’s owners and helped take the archive down.
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 researcher determined the archive is most likely an amalgamation of at least five breaches.
Severe privacy risks
In total, there were “tens of millions” of records, Cybernews concluded, splitting the discovered information like so:
- More than 23 million entries appearing to be voter or demographic registry data, containing full names, addresses, and birthdates
- Roughly 9.2 million healthcare data, in the format of France’s official RPPS/ADELI registries
- More than 6 million contact records from a CRM
- Approximately 6 million financial profiles with IBANs and BICs, tied to French banks
- Vehicle registration and insurance information
“Unlike traditional leaks caused by corporate misconfigurations, this exposure appears to be the work of a data broker or criminal collector. Such actors often merge stolen datasets from multiple breaches into unified databases to increase resale value and enable identity cross-linking,” the team explained.
“The mix of datasets paints a troubling picture: different sectors, one repository – and no protection. The incident poses a severe privacy risk for millions of French citizens.”
Cybernews was unable to identify who the real owner of the database is, but they traced it to a server in France and helped lock it down.
This type of databases is extremely valuable to cybercriminals, as they enable different attack techniques, including phishing, identity theft, wire fraud, and more.
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