Data leak at Abu Dhabi finance summit exposes global figures, FT reports
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Attendees at the Abu Dhabi flagship investment conference included former British prime minister David Cameron and hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard.
PHOTO: ADOBE STOCK
- Hundreds of attendees' passports and ID documents, including David Cameron's, were exposed online from Abu Dhabi Finance Week's unprotected cloud storage server.
- Scans of over 700 passports and state ID cards were accessible to anyone via a web browser, discovered by security researcher Roni Suchowski.
- ADFW confirmed a third-party vendor vulnerability, securing the server immediately after the Financial Times reported the security lapse.
AI generated
LONDON - Former British prime minister David Cameron and hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard were among the hundreds whose passports and other identification papers were leaked online after they attended an Abu Dhabi conference, the Financial Times reported on Feb 17.
The FT, citing documents, said scans of more than 700 passports and state identity cards were discovered on an unprotected cloud storage server associated with Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW), a state-sponsored event that hosted more than 35,000 people in December.
US investor and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was also among those whose identity documents were exposed, the FT said.
Mr Howard declined to comment, while Mr Cameron and Mr Scaramucci did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a statement to Reuters, ADFW confirmed “a vulnerability in a third-party vendor-managed storage environment relating to a limited subset of ADFW 2025 attendees”.
“The environment was secured immediately upon identification, and our initial review indicates that access activity was limited to the researcher who identified the issue,” ADFW added.
The data was accessible to anybody using a simple web browser, the FT reported, citing freelance security researcher and consultant Roni Suchowski, who discovered it.
The server was made secure after the FT approached ADFW about the leak on Feb 16, the report added. REUTERS
