- Football governing body AFC reportedly compromised, exposing sensitive data on more than 150,000 members
- The leaked records reportedly include passport scans, contracts, emails and detailed player information.
- The attack has been billed as the “biggest breach in football history”, with researchers warning of the risk of fraud.
The Asian Football Confederation (AFC), the main football governing body in Asia, has apparently been compromised after an attack exposed personal and highly sensitive information of more than 150,000 members to the dark web.
A report from Dataminr accuses a threat actor of posting a thread on the PwnForums marketplace over the weekend, advertising the archives.
In this document, the attackers claim to have emptied “the complete database of AFC players and coaches”, including data from Al Nassr FC, where giants like Cristiano Ronaldo, Sadio Mané and Marcelo Brozović play. The database would contain scans of passports, contracts, emails and AFC registration files.
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Posting samples
“The combination of passport scans, verified email addresses and player contract data creates a highly exploitable package for financial fraud, contract manipulation and social engineering targeted against some of the highest-paid athletes in the world,” said Jeanette Miller-Osborn, head of field cyber intelligence at Dataminr.
The threat actor posted a few samples to prove the authenticity of their claims. Apart from the above, these also contained full legal names, dates of birth, nationalities, player positions, AFC identifiers, club names, match details and venue information.
The threat actor thanked ShinyHunters for their help in publishing the leak and described the attack as “the biggest breach in football history.” However, this person is likely not affiliated with the group, since Dataminr described him as a “forum-level operator taking advantage of ShinyHunters’ credibility”, just to try to get money for his efforts.
As of press time, the AFC has yet to comment on the leak.
At the same time, researchers urged the AFC and its members to be wary of incoming messages and review how they store athlete data.
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