Data breach exposed locations of oil-industry explosives, handler credentials by Dell Cameron.
From the post:
A misconfigured storage device discovered by a security researcher in October left exposed thousands of internal files belonging to an explosives-handling company. [The original story is dated 01/12/2016, so this post is almost a year out of date.]
The files, which have since been secured, reportedly included details about facilities in three U.S. states where explosives are stored.
The leaky file repository belonged to Allied-Horizontal Wireline Services (AHWS), a leading wireline company with more than 400 employees and 70 wireline units throughout the United States. (“Wireline” is an industry term that refers to cabling technology used at oil and gas wells.) The company is licensed by the federal government to store and use explosives to complete an oil-drilling process known as “perforation.”
Chris Vickery, a lead security researcher at MacKeeper who notably discovered several misconfigured voter databases this year, found the breach in early October. After verifying the device’s owner, Vickery reached out to an AHWS executive, who quickly moved to secure the company’s data.
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Data breach stories are so common that out-dated ones are especially of little interest.
Except, that this date breach story illustrates the problem of data leakage.
From the tone of the post, you are thinking evil-doers need to find companies that use explosives, hack their systems, blackmail their staffs, etc. All of which is serious stuff, not to mention a lot of effort.
But an unknown ATF official leaks the information that makes all that work unnecessary:
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There are no federal laws prohibiting Allied-Horizontal Wireline Services from disclosing the location of its explosives, an ATF official said. “Licensees storing explosive materials must notify the authority having jurisdiction for fire safety in the locality where the explosive materials are stored.”
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Where are explosives are stored? (United States only) Check with your local fire safety authority.
Thanks ATF!