- Cybernews found exposed Kibana instance at adult site Frivol.com
- 479,000 user emails leaked, including some corporate addresses
- Company denied breach, but exposed data poses extortion and phishing risks
Amateur adult content website Frivol.com kept a Kibana instance available on the world wide web, accessible to anyone who knew where to look.
The flaw was recently discovered by security researchers from Cybernews, who analyzed it and found it contained 479,000 user email addresses.
After reaching out to Frivol, a Spanish company targeting the German-speaking community, the company denied having been breached, and claimed that the data leaked was of no value.
Work emails
“No customer data was stored in the affected system. At no point was there any risk of a data leak. Only insignificant log data was affected,” the company’s representative said.
How insignificant it is to have exposed emails is up for debate, however, as this is not your average data spill – these emails were used to register an account at an adult site. There is plenty of shame and stigma associated with the porn industry, and cybercriminals know very well how to exploit it.
To make matters worse, some people seem to have used their work email addresses to register these accounts. It was probably done to hide the activity from spouses and family members, but it opens the doors to extortion under the threat of notifying employers. A tarnished corporate image hurts just as much.
“The incident highlights how vulnerable even the tiniest amount of personal data can become if not handled properly by the company, as well as the importance of separating personal and professional online activity, and assessing one’s digital footprint,” Cybernews researchers noted.
After discovering the instance and attributing it to Frivol, the researchers reached out to the company who, without acknowledgement, quickly locked it down.
Right now, there is no evidence that the data was discovered by threat actors or used in phishing or sextortion campaigns.
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