Pierluigi Paganini October 26, 2019

Adobe suffered an important data leak, data for 7.5 Million Adobe Creative Cloud users have been exposed online through an unsecured server.

The tech giant Adobe suffered an important data leak, data belonging to 7.5 Million Adobe Creative Cloud users have been exposed online through an unsecured server.

The security breach took place this month and only impacted Creative Cloud users. Adobe Creative Cloud is a set of applications and services from Adobe Systems that gives subscribers access to a collection of software used for graphic design, video editing, web development, photography, along with a set of mobile applications and also some optional cloud services. In Creative Cloud, a monthly or annual subscription service is delivered over the Internet, currently it has roughly 15 million subscribers.

The unsecured server was discovered by the popular data leak hunter Bob Diachenko along with cybersecurity firm Comparitech. Data were exposed through and unsecured Elasticsearch database belonging to Creative Cloud subscription service.

“Nearly 7.5 million Adobe Creative Cloud user records were left exposed to anyone with a web browser, including email addresses, account information, and which Adobe products they use.” reads a post published by Comparitech.

“Comparitech partnered with security researcher Bob Diachenko to uncover the exposed database. The Elasticsearch database could be accessed without a password or any other authentication.”

Exposed information included Creative Cloud users’ email addresses, account creation date, adobe products users subscribed to, subscription, status, payment status, member IDs, country, time since the last login, a flag for users that are Adobe employees.

The data leak did not expose financial data or passwords.

Leaked data could expose the Creative Cloud users to scams and phishing attacks. Targeted attacks could trick victims into revealing their passwords or credit card number.

“The information exposed in this leak could be used against Adobe Creative Cloud users in targeted phishing emails and scams,” continues the blog post. “Fraudsters could pose as Adobe or a related company and trick users into giving up further info, such as passwords, for example.”

Diachenko discovered the unsecured server on October 19 and reported his findings to Adobe that secured it the same day.

“Late last week, Adobe became aware of a vulnerability related to work on one of our prototype environments. We promptly shut down the misconfigured environment, addressing the vulnerability,” reads the security update published by Adobe. “This issue was not connected to, nor did it affect, the operation of any Adobe core products or services. We are reviewing our development processes to help prevent a similar issue occurring in the future.”

At the time, it’s unclear how long the Elasticsearch database remained exposed online.

Creative Cloud users should remain vigilant about possible phishing emails pretending to be sent by Adobe that could ask them to provide further data, such as passwords and financial information.

Adobe users are recommended to enable the two-factor authentication for their accounts.

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Creative Cloud, data leak)

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