Hundreds of passport applications exposed at diplomatic institution
Half a thousand passport applications exposed at the Libyan Consulate in Stockholm left an unprotected instance accessible to the public.
The Cybernews research team discovered an exposed Amazon Web Services (AWS) instance with nearly 550 filled-in passport applications. The now-closed instance was attributed to the Libyan Consulate in Stockholm, a part of the Libyan Embassy in Sweden.
As the application’s title might suggest, applicants needed to fill in numerous personal details to obtain the document, which means the very same details were left accessible. Attackers roam the net for unprotected services, often utilizing automated bots that scrape everything they can find.
According to the team, the exposed instance revealed:
- Full names
- Dates of birth
- Email addresses
- Parental details
“With access to complete passport application details, cybercriminals may attempt to forge documents, commit immigration fraud, or engage in other fraudulent activities using stolen identities,” researchers claim.
Moreover, attackers could utilize stolen details for highly targeted phishing campaigns. For example, malicious actors could impersonate government agencies, demanding additional personal details or payments, or coax users into revealing more sensitive information.
“With access to complete passport application details, cybercriminals may attempt to forge documents, commit immigration fraud, or engage in other fraudulent activities using stolen identities.”
We have reached out to the Embassy of Libya in Sweden and will update the article once we receive a reply.
To prevent similar issues from taking place in the future, the team advises to:
- Change the access controls to restrict public access and secure the bucket.
- Update permissions to ensure that only authorised users or services have the necessary access.
- Retrospectively monitor access logs to assess whether the bucket has been accessed by unauthorised actors.
- Enable server-side encryption to protect data at rest.
- Use AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for managing encryption keys securely.
- Enforce SSL/TLS for data in transit to ensure secure communication.
- Consider implementing security best practices, including regular audits, automated security checks, and employee training.
- Leak discovered: March 2nd, 2025
- Initial disclosure: March 3rd, 2025
- CERT contacted: March 10th, 2025
- Leak closed: March 27th, 2025
