In times of technology, one of the major concerns of individuals, companies and government institutions is the leakage of data, Is not it? Because of this, there are companies that monitor any type of failure related to cybersecurity. In this case, Group-IB posted an error on the Ministry of Economy which ended up exposing the data of about 20,000 Brazilians. According to what was disclosed, the RGs and identification selfies of these individuals were leaked on the internet.
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According to the report, this flaw was discovered more than 1 year ago, in January 2021, but was only released last Thursday (16). Still, at the time, shortly after the discovery, the company notified the Brazilian authorities, who took down the server after 10 hours. According to virtual security experts, the MDE server was exposed for at least two months, as the file had been uploaded in November 2020.
How was the flaw discovered?
Group-IB performs a series of continuous checks on the Internet in several countries, including Brazil. The objective of this monitoring is precisely to find anomalies, so that several of them were found in the directory with the files of the Brazilians' Identity Cards.
Precedents
This is not the first failure of a Brazilian government institution that ends up disclosing citizens' data. In December 2020, the Ministry of Health exposed the information of 243 million Brazilians on the internet, including people who have already died. At the time, it was reported that there was exposure of the cadastral base, but malicious groups could not access the information.
In this case, the error was due to improper exposure of the login and password to access the Ministry of Health system. Even so, the agency published that it has security and data protection protocols, which are constantly evaluated and improved to mitigate exposures. Soon, the security layers were able to guarantee the privacy of the platform.