SafeUM
Home Blog Services Download Help About Recharge

Axarhöfði 14, 110 Reykjavik, Iceland

Iceland - 2015
SafeUM
Blog
Services
Download
Help
About
Recharge
Menu
Archive
TOP Security!
18 Dec 2015

Over 680TB of data exposed in MongoDB databases

Security researchers sound alarm on "very serious" privacy problem. There are at least 35,000 publicly accessible and insecure MongoDB databases on the Internet, and their number appears to be growing.

Combined they expose 684.8 terabytes of data to potential theft. This is the result of a scan performed over the past few days by John Matherly, the creator of the Shodan search engine for Internet-connected devices.

Matherly originally sounded the alarm about this issue back in July, when he found nearly 30,000 unauthenticated MongoDB instances. He decided to revisit the issue after a security researcher named Chris Vickery recently found information exposed in such databases that was associated with 25 million user accounts from various apps and services, including 13 million users of the controversial OS X optimization program MacKeeper. Matherly's new results show an increase of over 5,000 insecure MongoDB instances since July, a somewhat surprising result giving that newer versions of the database no longer have a default insecure configuration.

MongoDB versions 3.0 and newer only listen to "localhost," so they don't accept remote connections from the Internet. Yet, version 3.0.7 accounts for the largest number of exposed installations (3,010) found by Matherly and version 3.0.6 is also in the top five with 1,256 instances. "The fact that MongoDB 3.0 is well-represented means that a lot of people are changing the default configuration of MongoDB to something less secure and aren't enabling any firewall to protect their database," Matherly said in a blog post Tuesday. "It could be that users are upgrading their instances but using their existing, insecure configuration files."

The majority of the insecure MongoDB instances are hosted on cloud computing platforms run by DigitalOcean, Amazon.com and Alibaba Group. If the information found by Vickery, such as names, email addresses, birth dates, postal addresses, private messages and insecure password hashes, are an indication of what's in the other exposed databases, then the problem is very serious; and it's not just limited to MongoDB.

Tags:
MongoDB information leaks
Source:
CSO Online
2229
Other NEWS
3 Jul 2020 safeum news imgage An encrypted messaging service has been infiltrated by police
4 May 2020 safeum news imgage Two-Factor Authentication ​What Is It and Why You Should Use It
12 Dec 2019 safeum news imgage Encryption is under threat - this is how it affects you
4 Nov 2019 safeum news imgage Should Big Decisions Be Based on Data or Your Intuition?
7 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage VPNFilter malware infecting 500,000 devices is worse than we thought
4 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage Hackers target Booking.com in criminal bid to steal hundreds of thousands from customers
1 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage Operator of World's Top Internet Hub Sues German Spy Agency
30 May 2018 safeum news imgage US says North Korea behind malware attacks
29 May 2018 safeum news imgage Facebook and Google targeted as first GDPR complaints filed
25 May 2018 safeum news imgage A new reason to not buy these cheap Android devices
24 May 2018 safeum news imgage Flaws in smart pet devices, apps could come back to bite owners
23 May 2018 safeum news imgage Google sued for 'clandestine tracking' of 4.4m UK iPhone users' browsing data
21 May 2018 safeum news imgage LocationSmart reportedly leaked phone location data onto the web
18 May 2018 safeum news imgage The SEC created its own scammy ICO to teach investors a lesson
17 May 2018 safeum news imgage Thieves suck millions out of Mexican banks in transfer heist
All news
SafeUM
Confidential Terms of Use Our technologies Company
Follow us
Download
SafeUM © Safe Universal Messenger

Axarhöfði 14,
110 Reykjavik, Iceland

Iceland - 2015