Almost 100,000 files have been hacked and stolen by online file to PDF converters

A team of researchers from Cybernews discovered a large data leak on two sites that offer services for converting files to PDF format – PDF Pro and Help PDF.

These sites, owned by a British company, left Amazon S3 cloud storage containers unprotected, leading to the leak of users’ personal documents. Among the vulnerable documents are passports, certificates, identity cards and contracts. A total of 89,062 available files were found, of which 87,818 belonged to PDF Pro and 1,244 belonged to Help PDF.

Researchers say access to such personal documents gives criminals ample opportunities to commit fraud, including obtaining loans, renting real estate and buying expensive goods on behalf of victims. Although the Cybernews team has reached out to the service providers, the data is still available and any file uploaded to these sites may become publicly available.

This incident emphasizes the importance of careful handling of personal data on the Internet. Users are advised to carefully consider the security of their data before uploading private documents to random sites and to choose only proven and reliable services for such purposes.