Global IT and management consultancy Capgemini has been blamed for exposing the private information of tens of thousands of Australian jobseekers online.
Australian security researcher Troy Hunt said the breach exposes the names e-mail addresses phone numbers location cover letters and employment data of many Australians. The Australian newspaper put the number of Australians exposed at more than 700000; Hunt also reportedly estimated to iTnews that around 8 million user records were affected with 713000 individuals exposed in the Australian database.
Capgemini had allegedly placed database back-ups from recruiter Michael Page part of Pageon a publicly accessible server.
The data breach is similar to last month’s Australian leak in which about 1.3 million records exposed. The breach also reportedly luded the personal data of 780000 British job seekers. Overall an estimated eight million global user records were compromised in the leak.
Pagesaid the databases had been placed on a development server by its iT provider Capgemini.
Page which owns Michael Page said in a letter to users that an unauthorised party had “illegally gained access” to user data on November 1.
“We know that the data was not taken with any malicious intent” it said. “We have requested that the third-party destroys or returns all copies of the data. They have confirmed that they have already destroyed it and we have confidence that they have done so.”
The data is said to be easily found as it was left on the PageGroup’s server. PageGroup’s clients lude brands such as Adidas BT Amazon Diageo Samsung HSBC Rolls Royce Deloitte BP eBay and Twentieth Century Fox.
