PBS has faced a data violation of its employees’ corporate contact information and corporate contact information of its associates, learning by BlappingCopper.
Earlier this month, Bleepingcomputer was alerted to a file aired on the Discard Server in which the information was reportedly included.
This data was often not distributed by dark web sites, hacking forums, or threatened actors on other means. Instead, it was being shared on the discord server for fans of “PBS Kids”, where young adults, teenage and young children could talk about the favorite shows they grew up.
“Young adults, adolescents, and children sharing children are more than a sense of novelty, rebellious curiosity, or simply to achieve a little infamous within their colleagues groups,” BlappingComator was told.
“It is less about taking advantage of data for financial advantage and more about the ‘cool factor’ to keep it.”
“It is being said, the possibility of misuse is clearly.”
Bleepingcomputer has obtained the file and can confirm that it contains corporate contact information for 3,997 PBS employees and colleagues.
Each record in JSON file has an employee’s name, corporate email, title, timezone, department, location, job work, hobby and their supervisor.
After contacting PBS about the violation, the company confirmed that it was stolen from the internal service used for public television employees.
A PBS spokesperson told Blapping Copper, “After informing that an internal service for public television employees was posted online with user data from MyPBS.org, we started a thorough investigation of the incident, which is going on.”
“We have reached users whose information was included to inform about the incident and at this time, there is no evidence that the incident includes any other PBS system.”
Bleepingcomputer has not learned about any malicious use of data, but recently continues to circulate between discord communities in the end of this week.
The source sharing source with Blapping Copper states that they are concerned that the theft data can draw unwanted attention to these communities that are designed to talk about some of their favorite shows only for fans.
While violation seems to be more than curiosity than criminal intentions, employee data contact, especially amidst the ongoing political investigation of PBS and NPR, creates concern about how information for harassment or doxing can be misused.
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