Thousands of documents containing sensitive
information belonging to Mexico's embassy in Guatemala were leaked
online this week by a hacker. The stolen cache contained more than 4,800
files related to the embassy's activities including its dealings with
personal documents belonging to Mexican citizens. The hacker, identified
on Twitter as @0x55Taylor, published
the data online after the embassy failed to reply to his attempts at
making contact. The files were eventually pulled offline by the cloud
storage company used to host them, but TechCrunch was able to confirm the authenticity of the documents.
The hacker got ahold of the trove of documents after discovering
the server hosting the files suffered from a security vulnerability and
was compromised. After downloading the files, he found scans of passports, visas, birth certificates and other personal documents -- some of which belonged to Mexican citizens and diplomats.
Letters granting rights, privileges and immunities to embassy staff
were also found in the stash, as well as documents showing staff medical
expenses, vacation time and other administrative information.
0x55Taylor reportedly attempted to contact Mexican officials about the
issue but was ignored. While leaking the files online is one way to get
the attention of people, it also puts the victims of the leak at risk by
further exposing private information.
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