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Breach exposes personal details of almost all Ecuadorians

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 17 Sept 2019

The detailed information of potentially every person in Ecuador has been leaked online, in a massive and unprecedented national data breach that was discovered by cyber security firm, vpnMentor.

CNN reports that more than 20 million people, including an estimated seven million minors, were exposed in the leak, which was uncovered by Internet security firm vpnMentor during a routine project.

It adds that Ecuador is home to about 16.5 million people, meaning that the entire population could have been affected. The additional few million may be because the leaked data also included the details of deceased individuals, according to the Ecuadorian State Attorney General’s Office.

In a blog post, vpnMentor says its research team found a large data breach that may impact millions of individuals in Ecuador.

“Led by Noam Rotem and Ran Locar, our team discovered the data breach on an unsecured server located in Miami, Florida. The server appears to be owned by Ecuadorian company Novaestrat,” the firm says.

Novaestrat is a consulting company that provides services in data analytics, strategic marketing, and software development.

The data breach involves a large amount of sensitive personally identifiable information at the individual level. The majority of the affected individuals seem to be located in Ecuador, vpnMentor adds.

“Although the exact details remain unclear, the leaked database appears to contain information obtained from outside sources.

“These sources may include Ecuadorian government registries, an automotive association called Aeade, and Biess, an Ecuadorian national bank.”

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