The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2019 gained media hype just a couple of months ago. Now, the event that took place for three days in June 2019 has once again made it to the news. However, things aren’t so positive this time! The organization behind the E3 2019 leaked data of thousands of registered media personnel due to a website flaw.
E3 2019 Data Leaked
Reportedly, the website of the Electronic Entertainment Expo had a major security flaw that led to a data breach. Because of the bug, E3 2019 data leaked sensitive information regarding thousands of journalists and analysts who attended the show.
The news surfaced online after a YouTuber Sophia Narwitz shared it in her video.
It turned out that the ESA website contained the details of the attendees of the E3 2019 from the media industry. The details were present in the form of a compiled spreadsheet that had information of more than 2000 journalists, YouTube content creators, and Wall Street financial analysts.
As elaborated by VentureBeat, ESA collects certain information from the press members at the time of awarding ‘Press Badges’ to them. This information includes the registrant’s name, contact number, home address, etc. ESA then compiles this information to share it with member companies. However, in the present case, the information that was solely meant for some people became publicly available due to the website glitch.
ESA Rectified The Error, But…
As stated in her video, Sophia Narwitz reached out to the firm to inform them of the glitch. Fortunately, ESA pulled off the data within a few hours from the report. The firm also confirmed the same in the following statement to VentureBeat.
ESA was made aware of a website vulnerability that led to the contact list of registered journalists attending E3 being made public. Once notified, we immediately took steps to protect that data and shut down the site, which is no longer available. We regret this occurrence and have put measures in place to ensure it will not occur again.
However, things remain skeptical about the availability of the data to others. It is possible that some others might also have downloaded the sheet.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments.