Cybernews reports that a database containing 13.5 million complaints made to the City of Baltimore's 311 Services hotline dating back to 1989 has been exposed as a result of a misconfigured Kibana instance, which has since been secured.
Included in the compromised database were reports of alleged illegal activity and traffic accidents, as well as housing sanitization and animal control complaints, speed camera locations and statuses, and road quality reports dating as far back as 1989, or seven years before the establishment of the 311 Service, indicating the inclusion of old digitized reports in the data leak, according to the Cybernews research team.
"The leak undermines the privacy and potentially, security of individuals who reported issues, such as accusations of criminal activity, on the platform. Leaking such reports could be dangerous for Baltimore's citizens who use the platform, as the city is infamous for ranking at the top of the lists when it comes to violent crime in the US," said researchers.
