Master Deeds data breach: 2.3M accounts exposed
Severity: medium · Patch status: no-fix-needed · Since 2017-10-18
In March 2017, a 27GB database backup file named "Master Deeds" was sent to HIBP by a supporter of the project. Upon detailed analysis later that year, the file was found to contain the personal data of tens of millions of living and deceased South African residents. The data included extensive personal attributes such as names, addresses, ethnicities, genders, birth dates, government issued personal identification numbers and 2.2 million email addresses. At the time of publishing, it's alleged the data was sourced from Dracore Data Sciences (Dracore is yet to publicly confirm or deny the data was sourced from their systems). On 18 October 2017, the file was found to have been published to a publicly accessible web server where it was located at the root of an IP address with directory listing enabled. The file was dated 8 April 2015. Exposed data: dates of birth, deceased statuses, email addresses, employers, ethnicities, genders, government issued ids, home ownership statuses, job titles, names, nationalities, phone numbers, physical addresses. The breach dates from Mar 14, 2017; Have I Been Pwned loaded it on Oct 18, 2017.
What to do
- If you had a Master Deeds account, change its password and the password of any other account that reused it.
- Turn on multi-factor authentication wherever it is offered.
- Check whether your addresses are in this breach at https://haveibeenpwned.com.
- Expect targeted phishing that quotes the leaked details; verify any unexpected contact out of band.
Sources
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