Over 153 million U.S. and Canadian driver's licenses leaked and sold on dark web
A dark web identity theft service was selling digital scans of more than 153 million U.S. and Canadian driver's licenses, including the ID card of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to an investigation by cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs.
Authoritative cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs has uncovered a startling development in the realm of identity theft. According to Krebs' investigation, a dark web marketplace known as Nexus was peddling digital scans of over 153 million driver's licenses from both the United States and Canada. This staggering collection also encompassed more than 10 million ID cards, over three million travel documents, and at least 579,000 medical cards.
The illicit operation came to light when a newcomer to the Russian cybercrime forum Exploit advertised Nexus' extensive database. Krebs, intrigued by the advertisement, delved deeper into the platform's contents, identifying the database as authentic. Among the harvested data, Krebs discovered the ID of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, along with documents belonging to several of his acquaintances.
The authenticity of the stolen information was further corroborated by the timely nature of the scanned documents, which corresponded to the moments when customers had presented their IDs to Hertz car rental and Planet13 stores. Both companies had outsourced their document verification to IDScan.net, a third-party verification service.
Krebs commended IDScan.net's assistance in his internal investigation but refrained from disclosing further specifics. In response to the publication of Krebs' report, the Nexus platform vanished from the dark web.
Written by urgent.news from New Voice of Ukraine's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
