ACY Securities describes itself as one of Australia’s fastest growing multi-asset online CFD trading providers. But as first reported by HackRead, the trading firm was leaking 60 GB of user data until independent researcher Anurag Sen persisted in trying to alert them to a misconfigured elasticsearch database.
As seen by Hackread, the data included personally identifiable information such as demographic information including date of birth, but it also contained hashed passwords and trading-related information such as a trader’s annual income, business details, and more. The traders were from a number of companies, and the exposed logs reportedly dated back to 2020.
Getting ACY Securities to lock down their data required multiple attempts on the researcher’s part. At one point, he tweeted his frustration:
*Typical Day in Cyber-Security*
Me – ‘Trying to secure a Server Leaking full PII of Users Registered in the company’.
Company Reply – ‘We have our internal team who monitors all our security. Thanks for your interest.’#dataleak #cybersecurity
— Anurag Sen (@hak1mlukha) May 26, 2022
Me – ‘Trying to secure a Server Leaking full PII of Users Registered in the company’.
Company Reply – ‘We have our internal team who monitors all our security. Thanks for your interest.’#dataleak #cybersecurity
Sen tells DataBreaches that after he tweeted his frustration, ACY Securities forwarded his email to their security.
As reported by HackRead, an ACY representative eventually replied to the researcher by labeling the exposed server as an “insignificant one.”
Sen commented to HackRead:
They officially emailed me stating that ” Thank you for mentioning this, the below server is an insignificant one” – I am really not happy with the reply. They are considering personal details of registered users including hashed password, email address, physical address, full name, and mobile number – insignificant.
They probably would have been better off with a “we take privacy and security very seriously, so thank you for alerting us to this,” accompanied by a request that he delete any data or give them any more details that he might be able to share. Neither of those happened, however. In a DM exchange on Twitter, Sen informed DataBreaches that he initially provided the firm with a sample and a screenshot. When they asked for more proof, he provided them with the url to the server so they could take it offline.
“They didn’t ask anything else after they secured the data and said thanks,” he told DataBreaches. Since that time, he has sent them a few emails, he says, but “they are ghosting me.”
So they never asked him if he had downloaded data, whether he would securely delete any data he might have obtained, or if he had any other information to share with them?
DataBreaches submitted some questions to ACY Securities via their on-site contact form:
1. For how long were these data exposed without any secure password or login required to access?
2. Does ACY have access logs for the data? Other than Anurag Sen, can you tell me how many other IP addresses accessed the data while it was exposed?
3. Can you tell me how many other IP addresses downloaded data?
4. Will ACY be notifying any regulator of this leak?
5. Will ACY be notifying any users/customers of this leak?
DataBreaches also tweeted to ACY Securities’ Twitter team asking if the firm has an actual email contact for media.
No reply has been received in response to either contact/inquiry as of the time of this publication. This post will be updated when a substantive reply is received.