93.4m Mexican Voters Data found on open US server

In my hands is something dangerous. It is proof that someone moved confidential government data out of Mexico and into the United States. It is a hard drive with 93.4 million downloaded voter registration records— The Mexican voter database.

See the interview with Chris Vickery commenting on this breach:

Before going any further, let’s make one thing very clear. I’m not the one who transmitted the data out of Mexico. Someone else will have to answer for that. However, eight days ago (April 14th), I did discover a publicly accessible database, hosted on an Amazon cloud server, containing these records. There was no password or authentication of any sort required. It was configured purely for public access. Why? I have no clue.

After reporting the situation to the US State Department, DHS, the Mexican Embassy in Washington, the Mexican Instituto Nacional Electoral (INE), and Amazon, the database was finally taken offline April 22nd, 2016.

Under Mexican law, these files are “strictly confidential”, carrying a penalty of up to 12 years in prison for anyone extracting this data from the government for personal gain. We’re talking about names, home addresses, birthdates, a couple of national identification numbers, and a few other bits of info.