Giant leak exposes data from almost all Brazilians

https://www.somagnews.com/giant-leak-exposes-data-from-almost-all-brazilians/

by JeanMarcS • 5 years ago

382 111 5 years ago

geek_at• 5 years ago

Has anyone calculated at the current rate of leaks how long would it take for every human on earth to be in some of these lists?

nicoburns• 5 years ago

It doesn't really work like that. Some humans are likely completely off grid and not on record anywhere.

reaperducer2• 5 years ago

Some humans are likely completely off grid and not on record anywhere.

Quite a few, including a good percentage of my relatives.

One is particularly good at it. Aside from the wages his employer reports to the federal government, property ownership records, and an SSN, he simply doesn't exist.

His get paid each week in cash. Doesn't have a bank account or credit card. Because of his lifestyle and the type of vehicle he uses, he doesn't need a driver's license, registration, or insurance. His home has solar panels, a propane generator, and a well, so no utilities. I don't know what he does about trash service, but having seen the town, I wouldn't be surprised if it's still legal to burn your garbage on your property.

He's happy. Not paranoid that I can tell. He just lives a simple life where satisfaction comes from reading books and improving his mind, and not from hoarding electronic gadgets and social media thumbs to prove his worth.

xiphias27• 5 years ago

I treat my face, name, birthday and numbers as open data.

Maybe companies should stop using these things for verification and start allowing people to use cryptography more efficiently.

randerson• 5 years ago

I can just imagine the future: Instead of reading stories of Identity Theft, we'll read about people getting locked out of their identity .. like the folks today who lose their Bitcoin keys.

nkrisc• 5 years ago

That won't happen until companies are held liable for damages caused by inadequate authentication processes.

If a bank gives a credit card to someone who says they're me, based on only on my SSN, I don't see why that should be my problem. It's between the bank and whomever they gave the card to. If they don't know who they actually gave it, well then it sounds like they need to improve their process.

But it becomes my problem because it's my credit score that gets ruined.

Shivetya• 5 years ago

Companies? How about your government? I have a coworker who had returns filed against them by someone in prison! If that does not startle people how about that in some states absentee votes are merely verified against a signature on file.

What we need is a means that others can be sure it really is us and we can sure that actions we have taken are credited to us and those we did not are not.

In effect we will need a system by which we have instant notification; similar to how some CC providers mail or text you each transaction; and historical tracking so that we can prove when we did or did not.

However there are not many unique methods to physically identify people short of dna transfer. I know that people bring up Minority Report whenever facial recognition comes up but that wasn't the tech they used, they used iris recognition.

So we break down each action and assign a value to how secure and verified it must be and work our way up from there. Similar to how self driving cars are defined, on a level of one to five how secure must an action be before its accepted

reaperducer2• 5 years ago

I treat my face, name, birthday and numbers as open data.

So because you don't value privacy and choose not to control you personal data, nobody else deserves privacy or to control their personal data?

Yizahi• 5 years ago

Any day now. I guess we will have a global info system a-la Hyperion with zero privacy. It will be suspicious to be absent from such a system instead.

Lammy• 5 years ago

I would guess "some time around 2012".

hi5eyes• 5 years ago

https://www.somagnews.com/giant-leak-exposes-data-from-almos... links to the source of the snippet

According to the experts, who use artificial intelligence techniques to identify malicious links and fake news, the leaked data contains detailed information on 104 million vehicles and about 40 million companies, potentially vulnerable to 220 million people.

marcosdumay3• 5 years ago

Thanks, finally somebody telling what data is on the leak.

Information on the more than 104 million vehicles reveals important details, such as chassis number, license plate, municipality, color, make, model, year of manufacture, engine capacity and even the type of fuel used. In the case of legal entities, the following were leaked: CNPJ, corporate name, trade name and date of foundation.

Every piece of information on this list is either plainly visible (for cars) or published by the government.

The article talks about data of real people (not companies), but doesn't say what leaked about them.

Fabricio20• 5 years ago

This link [0] may have the information you are looking for.

The link above seems to be from an unrelated breach, the one discussed in the OP affects pretty much everything, not even your LinkedIn profile managed to escape.

[0] https://tecnoblog.net/404838/exclusivo-vazamento-que-expos-2...

diegoholiveira• 5 years ago

The article talks about data of real people (not companies), but doesn't say what leaked about them.

Personal data (CPF, Birth day and so on), credit scores, social class, acquisitive power, and other informations that a company specialised in credit score have. (the leak is probably from a credit score company).

mschuster91• 5 years ago

Every piece of information on this list is either plainly visible (for cars)

Nope, engine capacity, fuel type and year of manufacture are generally not visible on a car; the VIN is also not always publicly visible (in Europe, I don't know how the regulations are in Brazil).

What makes this database dangerous is its value for criminals in aggregated form... it's enough data to forge a car title, and assuming that there is another database that links VINs to individual people (either from the government or from a hacked bank), it now is possible to identify targets for a break-in attack.

dang2• 5 years ago

Ok, we've changed to that from https://www.databreaches.net/giant-leak-exposes-data-from-al.... Thanks!

aww_dang• 5 years ago

Articles about breaches rarely if ever contain a link to the actual data. I'm left trusting the journalist, who may or may not be tech literate. Even a random sampling of the records would be more illustrative than anything these bloggers post about.

dyingkneepad• 5 years ago

“No, we have bigger problems than that to worry about.”

Pretty much that. In the "Maslow's pyramid of government-related needs", the doxxing is near the top. People are much more worried with stuff like not dying to covid, not being kidnapped, not dying in traffic, paying the dreaded Boletos (bills), etc. Internet doxxing is dwarfed by the more urgent needs. Brazilians are also sure that exactly zero things are going to be done about these leaks. Some government representative is going to say "we're going to investigate" and that's as much as we're going to get.

I would love to be wrong here, by the way.

Natsu5• 5 years ago

This says that it leaked Brazilians' name & CPF numbers.

CPF being the number that people give to every random shopkeeper to enter that tax lottery. So, it's... not exactly a big secret. To do most official-type things you have to go down to the cartório with your actual ID, not just enter the number.

Heck, I've been to places where you had to use one to use the free wifi. Granted, in that particular case, it didn't care if you used someone else's. I wouldn't be surprised if that was also true, elsewhere, honestly.

I'm sure someone will find ways to misuse this but Brazil has bigger problems. Also, this doesn't seem to be a leak of government data, it looks like it came from Serasa Experian or one of its contractors.

So yeah, I tend to agree with you. If the government does something, it will probably be like that law posted on every elevator warning you to check that there's an actual elevator there, instead of just walking into the empty shaft. For those curious, that'd be lei estadual n^o 9.502 de 11/03/1997 - https://www.al.sp.gov.br/norma/?id=9419

Swizec• 5 years ago

Reminds me of the American SSN.

”This number is super secret and you must guard it with your life and never share! Oh also write it down on every semi-official form, send by paper mail, and enter into all sorts of webapps”

ascorbic• 5 years ago

The CPF is quite annoying as a tourist. Mostly there are workarounds, but it is ridiculous how many things assume you have one. Yes, fake ones usually work. It was a few years back when I visited, but the hoops I had to jump through to buy an internal flight was unbelievable. I mean, the idea that a non-resident might want to travel within the country on a budget airline right??

brwolfgang• 5 years ago

Not just CPF and names were leaked, lots of correlated information was leaked too, such as credit scores, civil status (married, single, etc), gender, birth date, e-mail, phone number, home and work addresses, education level, job, salary, net income, tons of data about bank accounts, even face pictures!

All that data, just available for anyone to dig in and do their worst.

Source (pt-br) https://tecnoblog.net/404838/exclusivo-vazamento-que-expos-2...

lukasdanin• 5 years ago

Unfortunately, you're not wrong.

Kaze404• 5 years ago

We must live in very different parts of Brazil because around these parts no one seems to care about Covid, which doesn't surprise me considering the message we get from the federal government.

kurthr• 5 years ago

Oh, no. It seems much more useful than that. By knowing credit, salary, age, and address... it's much easier to target high "value" targets for for on-line, or more likely in Brazil in person burglary or home invasion. This also gives cover to individuals banks and other organizations to drain large accounts by "guessing" passwords, since now it could be "anyone".

Like Covid, this is likely to be another generational wealth transfer event. It will be interesting to see how much stays in the country, but I expect most of it will.

afrcnc• 5 years ago

Another one?

Didn't this also happen last month? (https://www.zdnet.com/article/data-of-243-million-brazilians...)

rafaelturk• 5 years ago

Brazilian here. Same leak. New info suggest that the files contained far more info than previously thought.

hezag• 5 years ago

Yep, another one. This time it's from a Credit bureau.

EGreg2• 5 years ago

Another month another set of news that can be solved by NOT storing all the data in one place by one company. But for that we need better software. This article is literally like The Onion article about guns. Maybe we should put it with names changed every few months:

https://qbix.com/blog

diego_moita• 5 years ago

vulnerable to 220 million people.

In a country with 207 million people. This means that even the dead can't rest in peace.

On the bright side, we'll not have any data leaks anymore because there will be no more secrets to leak. :)

Chico75• 5 years ago

Probably concerns citizens living abroad as well

cuca_de_chumbo• 5 years ago

I was born dual US/Brazil and left Brazil just after turning 18 about 36 years ago, wondering wondering whether I'm in the leak and whether anyone could use my info to open illicit bank accounts, etc. I don't want to be associated with money-laundering, and am too far in headspace from financial-institutions/credit-bureaus to check it out.

anothernewdude• 5 years ago

Only 207 million? I thought there was at least a brazillian.

Bancakes• 5 years ago

No, Donald...

Xunjin• 5 years ago

I'm so proud of my country, we just got the goal, time to double it.

And If you ask the politicians to improve security, they will probably say "put 2 more security guard outside the building".

jbotz• 5 years ago

The Brazilian blog "Tecnoblog" has the full details here[1], with a list of all the information allegedly included in this data. If they are correct that's pretty much everything about everybody... I mean personal info (like addresses and phones, family, education, employer), financial info (like bank accounts, salary, credit score, creditors, bounced checks, whether receiving government assistance), other background info... for some entries (over a million) there even mugshots!

[1] https://tecnoblog.net/404838/exclusivo-vazamento-que-expos-2...

malandrew• 5 years ago

Is there a way for someone to look up what leaked about them so they can determine how problematic this could be?

slig• 5 years ago

Yes. The hacker has a contact email where you can send queries using the CPF (unique for each Brazilian) of whoever you want. He'll then send you a bitcoin address for payment and send you back the info.

Clewza3132• 5 years ago

Looks like it's Experian -- again.

https://www.serasaexperian.com.br/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experian#2015_data_breach

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experian#2020_data_breach

rutthenut2• 5 years ago

They've certainly failed on a number of occasions.

Given the type of data they hold, you would expect they get targeted a lot more. Which is why they need to do better.

Much better

GoblinSlayer2• 5 years ago

It is one of the "Big Three" credit-reporting agencies, alongside TransUnion and Equifax.

It's an Equifax buddy.

pelasaco• 5 years ago

I don't see how it can be new. When I lived some years in Brazil (around 1999-2001), and you could buy at a specific street in Sao Paulo, a CD with all the taxes information from every brazilian citizen.

FalconSensei2• 5 years ago

I remember seeing the news, years ago, that a guy was trying to discover were spammers were getting his email. So he created a bunch of emails for different things.

Guess which email started receiving spam very quickly? Yeah, the one he used for taxes

Consultant32452• 5 years ago

I remember in the 90s when we thought it was funny to sign people up for every newsletter we could find. You could basically destroy someone's email address making it forever unusable by spending an hour signing up for junk.

guiambros2• 5 years ago

I've been doing this for exact 20 years this week. I always use a unique address for each site (pretty easy; I just use a wildcard domain).

Pretty much everything has been leaked: most retailers, software companies, all phpBB forums, wordpress blogs, Experian, Amazon (3P Sellers, not AMZN itself), Dropbox, LinkedIn. The list goes on and on.

Notable exceptions: Google, Microsoft, Apple, IRS.

These days is a lot harder to see leaks, as most egregious spams get filtered even before it hits your server (I use GSuite).

agumonkey• 5 years ago

What's the idea behind selling this out in the clear ?

GoblinSlayer2• 5 years ago

Money.

Clewza3132• 5 years ago

Tax information isn't that harmful, many Nordic countries release it as a public service.

This appears to be a new leak of Experian's Brazilian database, which contains basically everything about everybody.

martin_a• 5 years ago

I think OP's point was that Brazil has always had illegal structures for data exfiltration and so on...

danilocesar2• 5 years ago

Even tough it's sound pretty bad and big (and it is), this is not new to brazilians. It's a known thing that you can buy DVDs (yes, DVDs) with personal data from millions of Brazilians customers on the streets of Sao Paulo. Daylight market (called Camelo's).

There was some news articles about it a few years ago. Even the former president data was there. Social Security Number (not as secret as it is in the US and Canada), address, name, phone number. Even some family relations. It was pretty cheap.

barbolo2• 5 years ago

This leak is much more harmful. If the data really comes from Serasa Experian, they have more accurate and structured data from people/companies/assets in Brazil than anyone else.

doubleclutch2• 5 years ago

So, CPF is not really a big deal, but I think here you can map cars based on license plates to persons and companies. Think about it.

doubleclutch2• 5 years ago

CPF is not a big deal, but if I read it correctly, you can basically search people/companies based on license plates, which is a big deal.

barbolo2• 5 years ago

It's much worse than that. The leak contains dozens of datasets (relatives, addresses, jobs (+ linkedin), schools, vehicles, income, debts, pictures of faces, companies).

geoffbp• 5 years ago

Sheesh!

iandanforth• 5 years ago

Man, why can't we get some useful data leaks? Like all the records from companies incorporated in DE, or all the tax records from companies and rich people or another one from offshore account havens.

rightbyte• 5 years ago

Ever heard of the Panama Papers?

vkou• 5 years ago

The problem with useful data leaks is that the people working on them have an unfortunate habit of getting killed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Caruana_Galizia

At the time of her death, Daphne Caruana Galizia was facing 48 libel suits.
On 16 October 2017, Caruana Galizia was driving close to her home in Bidnija, when a car bomb placed in her leased Peugeot 108 exploded, killing her instantly. The blast occurred on Bidnija Road, and left the vehicle scattered in several pieces across nearby fields.

thatguy0900• 5 years ago

I would assume the companies working on those accounts care more about security than the company working for average citizens. They can actually go out of business and see consequences after being hacked as opposed to, say, experian.

EGreg2• 5 years ago

We should literally start making a parody of this article, but on our blog:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_To_Prevent_This,%27_...

EDIT: I wrote it

https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/25/no-way-to-prevent-this-says...

dang2• 5 years ago

Url changed from https://www.databreaches.net/giant-leak-exposes-data-from-al..., which points to this.

forkLding• 5 years ago

I wonder if at a certain point the value of data falls simply because so much is leaked illegally online

shadowprofile77• 5 years ago

I would argue that if anything, in our current world of privacy and anonymity-indifferent lawyers, regulators, policy makers, corporate heads and most members of the general public, things like this and the hackers behind them perform a sort of obscene public service in a way: They make everyone at least somewhat leery about trends towards so much of our private lives falling into too many databases, especially when said data is highly personal, financial, medical or location-based (and thus especially compromising in certain contexts)

The reason why? While lawmakers, politicians and corporate heads couldn't give less of a shit about the average joe's privacy, they know that it's increasingly difficult even for them and their own families to stay private from too-pervasive, intrusive data collection, and they also now see ever more often just how near impossible it is to make said data stay secure from mass public leaks. Oops... Their own "optimization" obsessed nosiness maybe biting them back bit by bit.

It would be perversely amusing to see the head of some bullshit ad tracking firm, or bottom-feeding user data reseller, or the head of a snooping social network have their own dirty laundry leaked all over the web for all to see.

alek_m• 5 years ago

Welcome to the future

kazinator• 5 years ago

Suggested editorialization:

"Nation wide Brazilian exposes privates"

Giant leak exposes data from almost all Brazilians

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