A Researcher at cyber Security Company, UpGuard, Chris Vickery has discovered the Pentagon data leak which was available on free Amazon Web Servers. The U.S. defense department has accidentally leaked a trove of information stored in the cloud.
The data managing web service Amazon is a popular cloud storage platform that is in use by many individuals, organizations and governmental entities too. This service allows the customers to manage the things such as storing data and boosting computer power.
The exposed data includes at least 1.8 billion social media posts, news websites, and various publicly available sites, as told by Vickery to CNN Tech. These posts originated from many countries across the world, including the US, in various languages.
According to Vickery, the information is held by U.S. Central Command (Centcom) and U.S. Pacific Command (Pacom). However, the information is probably safe from malicious intrusions and the Defense Department secured the data on October 1 when the issue was addressed by Vickery to the officials in September.
The concerns regarding the performance of the government’s cybersecurity are still there even though the data leaked was not sensitive one. Whereas such exposure has shown the probability that fully secured data could be leaked in the future.
Maj confirmed the data leak. Josh Jacques, a spokesperson for U.S Central Command. He said in an email to CNN Tech, “We determined that the data was accessed via unauthorized means by employing methods to circumvent security protocols.”
“Once alerted to the unauthorized access, Centcom implemented additional security measures to prevent unauthorized access.”
However, a former White House Official in Obama’s era and former U.S. intelligence official, Timothy Edgar, has determined the leak as a serious one.
“[It’s] a pretty serious leak when you’re talking about intelligence information being stored in an Amazon cloud service and not properly safeguarded,” he said.
He confessed that, at the time when he was working in intelligence, he had regular concerns regarding the security and implementations of cloud technology.
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About the Author
Zehra Ali is a Tech Reporter and Journalist. She has done her Masters in Mass Communication. Topics related to cybersecurity, IoT, AI, Big Data and other privacy matters are extensively covered by her on various platforms. You can follow her on twitter.
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