"Employee Info Among 13 Million Records Leaked by Fox"

A team at Website Planet has found that a configuration error exposed millions of internal records traced back to Fox News, including personally identifiable information on employees.  The researchers claimed that anyone with an internet connection could theoretically have discovered the 58GB trove, which was left open with no password protection.  It contained almost 13 million records of content management data, including an unspecified number of employee details.  The researchers stated that upon further investigation, nearly all records contained information indicating Fox News content, storage information, internal Fox emails, usernames, employee ID numbers, affiliate station information, and more.  One folder contained 65,000 names of celebrities, cast and production crew members, and their internal Fox ID reference numbers.  The unprotected records also captured a wide range of data points, including event logging, host names, host account numbers, IP addresses, interface, device data, and much more.  The researchers stated that the 700+ internal Fox email addresses could have been leveraged by fraudsters to carry out follow-on phishing attacks, while the database itself could have been encrypted and held to ransom.  Although it’s unclear how long the database was exposed, the researchers claimed the Fox team “acted fast and professionally” to mitigate the issue once notified.

Infosecurity reports: "Employee Info Among 13 Million Records Leaked by Fox"