14 DAY TRIAL // WikiLeaks committed another blunder over the weekend, when the organization published 19,252 emails stolen and donated by a Russian hacker. The issue lies in the fact that these emails contained, among other things, the sensitive information of Democratic Party donors.
The data, which is still online at the time of writing, three days after WikiLeaks dumped the files, contains sensitive information such as full names, Social Security numbers, passport IDs, addresses, phone numbers, and more.
WikiLeaks dumped the data stolen by Guccifer 2.0
The data was stolen after the Democratic National Committee (DNC) discovered that someone had hacked its server back in April.
An initial investigation revealed the presence of malware that had previously been tied to two Russian-based cyber-espionage groups called Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, associated with Russia's military and FSB agency.
A few days later, a rogue hacker named Guccifer 2.0, claiming to be from Romania, took responsibility for the hack and started dumping files from the DNC servers at regular intervals.
He also announced that he gave all the files he stole from the DNC servers to WikiLeaks, which said it would publish them at a later date.
WikiLeaks never vetted and combed the data for personal information
The organization published part of the data on Friday, July 22, but unlike more reputable journalistic agencies, it miserably failed to censor or filter out the files containing the personal details of US citizens.
This is not the first time WikiLeaks commits this kind of error. During the Sony Hack incident, WikiLeaks dumped files that also contained the personal details of Sony employees with a blatant disregard for their personal life.
Democratic Party donors should search the WikiLeaks portal and see if their details have been exposed in the latest WikiLeaks dump, and if so, invest in an identity theft protection service.
The latest news in the series of events involving the DNC hack is that Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced her plans to resign as Democratic Party chairwoman following the fallout from the server breach and latest WikiLeaks data dump.
Below is a sample WikiLeaks search that exposes the personal details of one of the Democratic Party's donors.
