Over 1.5 billion files exposed online, and hackers are not to blame this time

 

Over 1.5 billion files exposed online, and hackers are not to blame this time.

According to certain reports it has been found that over 1.5 billion private files. Which shouldn’t be exposed are available on the internet that too for anyone with minimal technological knowledge.

Researchers from the cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows said a scanning tool used in the first three months of 2018. They found mountains of private data online from people and companies across the world. According to the report, more than 12 Petabytes of data available which is even bigger than Panama Papers leak. This type of ease of availability makes it a quick job for hackers to take control of the data and misuse it.

A significant amount of the data left open was from payroll and tax return files, which accounted for 700,000 and 60,000 files respectively, Digital Shadows said. It noted medical files and lists were also weakly protected, with some 2.2 million body scans open to inspection.

In many cases, users themselves backup up their data to some unsafe cloud websites which in turn lead to a leak of their secret data. The majority of the files found by Digital Shadows were exposed by poor security practices in servers and file-sharing protocols. “Third parties and contractors were among the most common sources of sensitive data exposure,” the report said.