VirusTotal leak impacts US, other countries’ government agencies

Google-owned VirusTotal has confirmed the exposure of a database with the names and email addresses of 5,600 customers, including employees at the U.S. Cyber Command, National Security Agency, Department of Justice, and FBI, as well as government agencies in Germany, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and the U.K., reports The Hacker News. Such a data leak, which was initially reported by German news outlets Der Standard and Der Spiegel, stemmed from the inadvertent uploading of the information to VirusTotal, according to a Google Cloud spokesperson, who noted that immediate action has been done to the exposed data. "We removed the list from the platform within an hour of its posting and we are looking at our internal processes and technical controls to improve our operations in the future," said the spokesperson. Organizations have been previously warned by Germany's Federal Office for Information Security of the potential exposure of sensitive data resulting from automated uploads of suspicious email attachments to VirusTotal.