Pierluigi Paganini February 16, 2018

Researchers discovered an Amazon S3 bucket contains personal information and scans of IDs of some 119,000 US and international citizens.

It has happened again, researchers discovered another unsecured Amazon S3 bucket holding a huge trove of data that was exposed online. The Amazon S3 bucket contains personal information and scans of IDs of some 119,000 US and international citizens, the discovered was made once again by Kromtech security experts earlier this month.

The data belongs to the FedEx-owned company Bongo International that provides support the online sales of North American retailers and brands to consumers in abroad. Bongo was acquired in 2014 by FedEx and was operating with the name FedEx Cross-Border International until it went out of the business in April 2017.

The AWS bucket contained more than 112,000 files, unencrypted information and ID scans of customers from many countries, including the US, Mexico, Canada, various EU countries, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Japan, Malaysia, China, Australia.

“Among other stuff, it contained more than 119 thousands of scanned documents of US and international citizens, such as passports, driving licenses, security IDs etc. IDs were accompanied by scanned “Applications for Delivery of Mail Through Agent” forms (PS Form 1583) – which also contained names, home addresses, phone numbers and zip codes.” reads the blog post published by the company.

ZDNet analyzed the documents and found scans of drivers’ licenses, national ID cards, work ID cards, voting cards, utility bills, vehicle registration forms, medical insurance cards, firearms licences, US military identification cards, and credit cards that customers used to verify their identity with the FedEx division.

“Among the exposed files, ZDNet confirmed drivers’ licenses, national ID cards, and work ID cards, voting cards, and utility bills. We also found resumes, vehicle registration forms, medical insurance cards, firearms licences, a few US military identification cards, and even a handful of credit cards that customers used to verify their identity with the FedEx division.” wrote Zack Whittaker on ZDNet.

“One identity card, when we checked, revealed the details of a senior official at the Netherlands’ Ministry of Defense.”

It seems that the Amazon S3 bucket includes data related to anybody who used Bongo International services between 2009 and 2012 and the bad news is that it has been available for public access for many years. As said, FexEx bought the company in 2014, it is likely it was not aware of the data leak at the time of the acquisition.

Kromtech tried to contact FedEx without success, the company removed the S3 bucket only after its existence was publicly disclosed.

“After a preliminary investigation, we can confirm that some archived Bongo International account information located on a server hosted by a third-party, public cloud provider is secure,” said FedEx spokesperson Jim McCluskey. “The data was part of a service that was discontinued after our acquisition of Bongo. We have found no indication that any information has been misappropriated and will continue our investigation.”

In October 2017, the Kromtech Security Center released a free scan tool that could allow admins to identify and secure Amazon S3 Buckets belonging to their organizations.

Let me suggest reading the guide published by the company to explain how to secure Amazon S3 buckets.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – FedEx, Amazon S3 bucket)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]