Cloud Security practiced carelessly is said to have led to the leak of RNC Voter database. A researcher from the UpGuard Cyber Risk team confirmed this news and also stated that the leak could have been prevented if proper cyber security skills were practiced.
UpGuard research discovered that Republican National Committee’s voter database info which was hosted on Amazon Web Services lacked proper security skills which made the data fall into the wrong hands ( Russia).
Security expert named Chris Vickery working on the UpGuard Cyber Risk Analyzing project found that the database exposed around 198 million records hosted on AWS server due to misconfigured cloud-based storage servers.
Vickery sarcastically opened up his mind by saying that the database containing critical info of more than 200 million voters was protected with just a 6 letter password.
Making matters worse in the RNC leak was the fact that the voter database had some extremely sensitive data including information related to potential voters for Obama and Romney in 2012, Potential voters for Trump and Clinton in 2016 and other details related to those voting in favor or against issues related to environment, education, technology, science and Maths.
The database which might have flown into the hands of the bad guys by now also contained details such as those voting on specific issues like Obamacare, fossil fuels usage, infrastructure investment, teenage pregnancies, gun laws, Illegal immigration or on the current financial situation of the United States.
So, we can easily come to a conclusion that lack of awareness or a kind of relaxed behavior by the government contractor has not only exposed the data of more than 198 million US voters to state funded actors but has put the future of US elections in jeopardy.
