Data Leak of South African IT firm exposes over 1 Million Web Browsing Records

Security researchers at vpnMentor recently discovered an unsecured and unencrypted database owned by the South African information and communications technology (ICT) company Conor. The breached database consisted of daily logs of user activity by customers of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that used web filtering software built by Conor.

The leak exposed all internet traffic and activity, along with their personally identifying information and highly sensitive and private information. For two months it revealed activity logs such as website URLs, IP addresses, index names and MSISDN codes which identify mobile users on a specific network. The details contained in this breach included highly sensitive web browsing activity like attempts to visit pornography websites, social media accounts, online storage including iCloud and messaging apps such as WhatsApp. In total, this resulted in 890+ GB of data and over 1 million records being exposed.

“Because the database gave access to a complete record of each user’s activity in a session, our team was able to view every website they visited – or attempted to visit. We could also identify each user,” the vpnMentor team explained in their statement. “For an ICT and software development company not to protect this data is incredibly negligent. Conor’s lapse in data security could create real-world problems for the people exposed.”

Such an incident could make Conor suffer significant reputational damage and integrity loss. In addition, it exposed how their filter system worked and ways to circumvent it. This could lead to their product becoming ineffective against attempts to bypass it, making it redundant. In result, the outcome may lead to a loss of business for Conor, since clients may no longer feel like they can trust the company and the values they propose.