Former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard were among hundreds of individuals whose passports and other identification documents were exposed online following their attendance at a conference in Abu Dhabi, according to the Financial Times.
Hundreds of Documents Found on Unsecured Server
The FT, citing documents, said scans of more than 700 passports and state identity cards were discovered on an unprotected cloud storage server associated with the Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW), a state-sponsored event that hosted more than 35,000 people in December.
U.S. investor and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was also among those whose identity documents were exposed, the FT said.
Howard declined to comment, while Cameron and Scaramucci did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Event Organizers Cite Third-Party Vulnerability
ADFW, in a statement to Reuters, said, “a vulnerability in a third-party vendor-managed storage environment relating to a limited subset of ADFW 2025 attendees.”
“The environment was secured immediately upon identification, and our initial review indicates that access activity was limited to the researcher who identified the issue,” ADFW added.
The data was accessible to anybody using a simple web browser, the FT reported, citing freelance security researcher and consultant Roni Suchowski, who discovered it. The server was made secure after the FT approached ADFW about the leak on Monday, the report added.
(With inputs from Reuters)
