Massive hack gives scammers access to over 150 million drivers licenses

In one of the most troubling identity theft incidents in recent history, a massive data breach at the ID verification service IDScan has exposed an estimated 153 million personal identity documents. Unlike typical breaches that leak passwords or credit card numbers, this cyberattack stole ID scans of front-and-back images of driver’s licenses and other identity documents, including non-driver identification cards, travel documents or international IDs, dispensary cards and government access cards.The sheer scale of the compromised data leaves millions of people vulnerable to long-term identity theft and fraud.Here is what you need to know about the breach and how to protect yourself.The breach was brought to light by independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs.

Krebs was alerted by a source to a new Russian-language cybercrime forum and dark web marketplace known as “Nexus.” The operators of Nexus boasted they had acquired a huge haul of personal information by continuously exfiltrating sensitive data into a private database for over a year.To verify the legitimacy of the claims, Krebs accessed the dark web service and searched for his own information.

He successfully located his own scanned driver’s license, alongside those of several other individuals he contacted to authenticate the leaked files.The source of the stolen data was traced back to IDScan.net, a Louisiana-based company that provides in-person identity and age verification services.The company provides identity verification technology for major corporations such as Hertz, FedEx, Target, and GameStop, as well as more than 1,000 cannabis dispensaries, car rental agencies and gun shops across 19 states. Because these businesses rely heavily on IDScan to authenticate government-issued IDs, the company’s databases are a goldmine for cybercriminals.

To understand the sheer volume of data flowing through their systems, IDScan reported that it processed a staggering 150 million ID scans in...