Open S3 Bucket Exposes 2.5 Million Student Loan Records

A student loan servicing platform suffered a data breach when attackers discovered a publicly accessible Amazon S3 bucket that lacked any access controls. The misconfigured bucket allowed anyone on the internet to list and download its contents, and the threat actors quickly harvested personal data for roughly 2.5 million borrowers, including names, Social Security numbers, loan details, and contact information.

The exposure puts millions at risk of identity theft, fraud, and credential stuffing attacks, while the organization faces potential regulatory penalties under GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy laws. Defenders must treat cloud misconfigurations as critical vulnerabilities: enforce least‑privilege bucket policies, regularly audit public exposure, and employ automated monitoring to detect anomalous access patterns before data can be exfiltrated.

Categories: Data Breaches, Cloud & SaaS Security, Identity & Access Management

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