Well, isn't this nice.
Any why do they have all this info?
When we eventually get to look back on 2016, we might be tempted to label it “The Year of Leaking Voter Lists.”
The year began with many people distraught to learn that a database with voter registration records of 191 million voters had been exposed online. Voter registration lists include name, address, political party, telephone number, and whether the voter voted in the last elections and primaries. It appeared that many Americans never knew that these lists were generally considered public records.
But while they were adjusting to that piece of information, they also learned that there was a second leaking voter database with more than 56 million voter records that exposed not only voter registration data but personal information such as Christian values, bible study, and gun ownership in 19 million profiles.
Both databases had been uncovered by Chris Vickery, a security researcher at the cybersecurity firm MacKeeper. And they were both eventually secured after Chris Vickery, this reporter, and Steve Ragan of CSO began making some phone calls and trying to track down the source of the leaks.
This week, Vickery mentioned that he has uncovered yet another exposed voter list database. This one contained 154 million records and was exposed because of a misconfiguration in a CouchDB installation. Unlike the previous leaky databases that had been hosted on Amazon, this one was hosted on Google.
The records in this database contained a slew of personal and sensitive detail. For all individuals, the database included the following fields:
As seen in the redacted screenshot below, some entries had additional fields that included information on income, whether the individual was likely to have children, whether they owned a gun, and their ethnicity. Yet other entries had fields like "is conservative." Vickery informs the Daily Dot that there was also a surprising amount of email addresses and Facebook profile URLs.
Chris Vickery/MacKeeper Security Research
Any why do they have all this info?
When we eventually get to look back on 2016, we might be tempted to label it “The Year of Leaking Voter Lists.”
The year began with many people distraught to learn that a database with voter registration records of 191 million voters had been exposed online. Voter registration lists include name, address, political party, telephone number, and whether the voter voted in the last elections and primaries. It appeared that many Americans never knew that these lists were generally considered public records.
But while they were adjusting to that piece of information, they also learned that there was a second leaking voter database with more than 56 million voter records that exposed not only voter registration data but personal information such as Christian values, bible study, and gun ownership in 19 million profiles.
Both databases had been uncovered by Chris Vickery, a security researcher at the cybersecurity firm MacKeeper. And they were both eventually secured after Chris Vickery, this reporter, and Steve Ragan of CSO began making some phone calls and trying to track down the source of the leaks.
This week, Vickery mentioned that he has uncovered yet another exposed voter list database. This one contained 154 million records and was exposed because of a misconfiguration in a CouchDB installation. Unlike the previous leaky databases that had been hosted on Amazon, this one was hosted on Google.
The records in this database contained a slew of personal and sensitive detail. For all individuals, the database included the following fields:
- Addresses_AddressLine
- Addresses_City
- Addresses_State
- Addresses_Zip
- Addresses_ZipPlus4
- Age
- Congressional_District_2011_NEW
- EstimatedIncome
- Ethnic
- FirstName
- Gender
- LastName
- Parties
- Phone10
- State_Senate_District_2011_NEW
- Vote_Frequency
- ZIP
As seen in the redacted screenshot below, some entries had additional fields that included information on income, whether the individual was likely to have children, whether they owned a gun, and their ethnicity. Yet other entries had fields like "is conservative." Vickery informs the Daily Dot that there was also a surprising amount of email addresses and Facebook profile URLs.
Chris Vickery/MacKeeper Security Research
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