Data Breach

Decathlon Spain data leak exposed Spanish employees’ data & more

Experts discovered a leaking, active database with over 123 million records belonging to Decathlon Spain (and possibly Decathlon UK as well).

Experts from vpnMentor have uncovered a leaking, active database containing over 123 million records belonging to the sporting goods retailer Decathlon Spain (and possibly Decathlon UK as well).

The unsecure archive is greater than 9GB in size and was published on an ElasticSearch server.

“The vpnMentor cybersecurity research team, led by Noam Rotem and Ran Locar, have uncovered a leaking, active database with over 123 million records and greater than 9GB in size on an ElasticSearch server, belonging to Decathlon Spain.” reads the post published by vpnMentor.

vpnMentor researchers discovered the Decathlon’s data leak as part of a huge web mapping project, the database was accessible using a common web browser.

Timeline of Discovery and Owner Reaction

The experts discovered the database on February 12, 2020, and reported their discovery to Decathlon on February 16, the archive was security on February 17.

The records contained in the unsecured database include employee data and more such as:

  • Employee
  • Unencrypted passwords
  • API logs
  • API username and unencrypted password
  • PII of employees
    • Social security numbers
    • Full names
    • Nationalities
    • Mobile phone numbers
    • Full addresses
    • Birthdates
    • Education
  • Work email addresses
  • Employment contract information
    • Working hours
    • Location
    • Qualifications
    • Contract period
    • Roles
  • Customer email and login information, unencrypted
  • Private IP addresses

“Our research team was only able to confirm that the database belonged to Decathlon Spain, with a strong possibility of Decathlon United Kingdom information included as well.” reported vpnMentor. “These are the countries where we found local Decathlon data included in the leak, but we did not go through all 123 million+ records, and it is possible that there are more locations in additional countries that were impacted.”

The archive also includes unencrypted logins for administrators that could be used by attackers to take over accounts and obtaining otherwise confidential information about stores, employees, and customers.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – data leak, privacy)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

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