Terrorist watchlist with nearly 1.9M Records exposed

Muskan Singh

August 17, 2021

Volodymyr Diachenko, aka ‘Bob,’ the head of security research at Comparitech, revealed the discovery of a federal terror watchlist in his LinkedIn post on July 19th. It was a no-fly list with over 1.9 million records without any security protections or passwords. The no-fly list lists individuals considered dangerous from the Terrorist Screening Center, administered by the FBI. The record includes full name, citizenship, gender, date of birth, passport number, no-fly indicator, and more information of the suspected terrorist. Diachenko posted a screenshot on Twitter with information redacted from the list. The exposed server that hosted the watchlist was indexed by search engines Censys and ZoomEye. After discovering it on July 19, it was reported to the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) on the same day. However, the exposed server wasn’t taken down until about three weeks later, on Aug 9. The people on the list have been ‘suspected of terrorism’ but ‘have not been charged.’ Access to the list by an unauthorized person could be potentially harmful to the innocent people on the list.“Organizations need to continuously monitor all resources deployed in their enterprise to minimize risks of such exposure. Such records can be sold on the dark web or used for further attacks, especially if credentials are involved.”

Abridged fromThreat Post