up to 39 out of 615 politicians who make Congress and this management committee In spain His personal information has been leaked in dark internetIt was revealed that new study Developed by Swiss technology company Proton, specializing in privacyAnd to which EL PERIODICO has reached.
The report, conducted in collaboration with digital risk firm Constella Intelligence, reveals email Spanish officials exposed themselves a total of 117 times dark webThe part of the network that is hidden from search engines, such as Googlea place where people frequent cyber crime, Representative Of these, 29 will be affected and senators, 10.
However, the real concern is regarding Cyber security They are not the addresses of email In fact, but the data associated with these accounts may be exposed after a third party breach. “If a politician uses his official work email to create an account Linkedin, Adobe one of the two dropbox And then that service gets hacked, there are many such cases sensitive data There is something associated with that person that could fall into the wrong hands,” explains Eamon Maguire, head of account security at Proton.
If a politician uses their work email to create an account on a service that is later hacked, there is a lot of sensitive data that could end up in the wrong hands.
Thus, the investigation revealed that the leak would have affected a wide range of personal information. passwordsdate of birth, profile social networkFrom IP address and even data credit card Associated with compromised emails.
“National Threat”
Exposure of this data can be very problematic, as it can be obtained by all kinds of malicious actors to launch cyber attacks more effective. For example, they can be used to personalize computer attacks such as phishingWho try to make the victim believe that they are talking to a legitimate interlocutor in order to deceive them or even impersonate them.
Considering that these are legislators with access to particularly sensitive information, the leak of their privacy is even more problematic. “A single password breach could pose a serious risk national securityMaguire says. “Anybody can become a target and politicians, because of their position, are fundamental targets.”
A single password breach could pose a serious threat to national security
Spain, better than its neighbors
The report shows that the situation is much worse in other major European countries. Thus, while in Spain only 6.3% of MPs have had their data leaked, this figure has increased to 68%. united kingdom and is at 18% France and up to 14.9% Italyof 44% MEP Their email accounts have also been exposed dark web,
Proton claims it has alerted the exposed politicians and asked them to update their passwords to ensure the security of their accounts. However, when asked by EL Periodico, the Swiss firm assured that it had not yet received any response from Spanish representatives and senators.
