- ADFW 2025 exhibited over 700 passport and identity scans from high-profile attendees
- The leak included documents from David Cameron, Anthony Scaramucci, Alan Howard and Richard Teng of Binance.
- Misconfigured and secured third-party vendor database after discovery; no evidence of malicious access
Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW) allegedly leaked extremely sensitive information about its attendees, including hundreds of high-profile figures.
Organized by the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) under the patronage of senior UAE leaders, the event is a major financial sector event that brings together global leaders in finance, investment, politics, technology and markets.
But according to a new Financial Times report, ADFW maintained a public, non-password-protected database containing scans of more than 700 passports and state ID cards.
No proof of exploitation
The database was discovered by Roni Suchowski, an independent security researcher and consultant. Among those whose passports have been leaked are American investor and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, former British Prime Minister David Cameron and hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard.
Other figures mentioned in their report include Richard Teng, co-CEO of crypto exchange Binance, who is also the former CEO of ADGM Abu Dhabi, and Lucie Berger, EU ambassador to the UAE.
The report claims that more than 35,000 people participated in the event, meaning only a tiny portion of visitors had their data leaked. So far, none of the people mentioned in the reports have commented on the leak.
Talk to PK Press ClubADFW said it fixed “a vulnerability in a storage environment managed by a third-party vendor affecting a limited subset of ADFW 2025 participants.”
“The environment was secured immediately following identification, and our initial review indicates that access activity was limited to the researcher who identified the issue,” ADFW added. In other words, the hackers didn’t find the database before the searcher did.
Misconfigured databases remain the leading cause of data leaks on the Internet.
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