A database with info on 80M+ US households was left open to the public
[MUSIC]
Lastly, our own Laura Hautala had an exclusive on an exposed database containing information on 80 million US households.
It's unclear who owned the database, but this was on a service run by Microsoft.
But it is sort of example of, I guess, the perils of storing information online.
Yeah, a lot of these leaks happen because they failed to secure their databases, because they think they're the only ones that have access to it.
But anyone can find these if they have a proper IP address or are looking in the right places.
As these security researchers found for this story.
The problem with that is, if anyone just stumbles into this, it's kind of like finding gold buried in a forest or something like that.
But, it's still unclear If anyone did have access to it or it was maliciously used but this is a massive amount of data on people.
8 million households we're talking about usernames, we're talking about location, or residents we're talking about whether or not they're single or married, all kinds of demographics 0-
There's no sensitive information like social security number or credit cards or passwords or anything like that so You don't really have to worry about that, but that's still a lot that attackers can do with your name and address alone.
Right, and the big mystery is, we don't even know who owns this database, so we don't even know who to contact to get this fixed.
We did contact Microsoft, they declined to comment, it's clearly not Microsoft's responsiblity.
[CROSSTALK]
The same thing happens with Amazon all the time.
Right, but still, it is definitely, just sort of a example of just how tricky these things can be and how commonplace these kinds of vulnerabilities are, right?
Yeah.
All right, for more of these stories, check us out on CNET.
I'm Roger Chang.
I'm Alfred Xang.
Thanks for listening.
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