Clearview AI first made headlines back in New York Times exposé detailed its massive facial recognition database, which consists of billions of images scraped from websites and social media platforms.
On a negligent configured server of the US company specializing in automated facial recognition, there were temporarily sensitive internal files such as the source code of the biometric application, apps for the operating systems, 70,000 videos and access IDs for operational messenger communication. Anyone with knowledge of the vulnerability could have easily picked up the company’s data.
The System Allowed To Register As A New User Without Any Requirements
It is said that the data storage access was protected by a password query, but the system allowed it to register as a new user without any requirements and to log in with the user IDs it had created.
The source code stored on the server directory that can be reached in this way could be used, to compile and run your own apps for the solution. The company’s service allows users to take a photo of a person, upload it and compare it with a database of billion portraits that Clearview compiled largely from social networks. This makes it easy to find out the identity of the person being photographed.
The Clearview server also contained secret keys for additional cloud storage, which in addition leads to executable software that contained some apps that were still in the development stage and access tokens, which could be used to access private messages from employees without a password.
Possible Data Protection Violations
Last month, the customer list had already fallen into the hands of hackers and was later processed by the media. Contrary to public assertion, not only law enforcement agencies are among the users of the service, but also many department store chains. Several lawsuits against the company are pending in the United States. The attorneys are investigating this violated data protection regulations.
