More than 153 million US and Canadian driver’s licenses, as well as other identity documents, have reportedly become available for purchase on the dark web for a limited time. According to cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs, the service was called Nexus, and although it’s no longer available at the time of writing, it claimed to have possessed 153 million driver’s licenses, 10 million ID cards, 1.9 million travel documents, 1.3 million international driver’s licenses, 579k medical cards, 429k common access cards, 91k residence cards, 77k employment authorization records, and 5 million other documents, allegedly sourced from an ID-authentication service based in Louisiana.
However, Planet13 and Hertz [the companies involved] do not do their own authentication; instead, they contract a service provider for the service. Now, it turns out that both Planet13 and Hertz used the company for identity verification and ID-authentication — IDScan.
And now I feel totally justified for refusing to, pre-2016, sign up for Nexus to speed up crossing the border. As soon as I found out it was a private operation via a company that had no history in identity management that was contracting out the actual identification to IDScan, I told everyone who asked to avoid using the service — it wasn’t worth the half hour or so saved in border crossings to be sharing that type of information with a chain of private companies with questionable data protection practices.
Another example of the benefits of the SaaS revolution. Corporations just offloading risk and accountability. I need a list of what hasn't been put up for sale, shorter list at this point.
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