A million at risk from user data leak at Korean beauty platform PowderRoom

South Korean beauty content platform, PowderRoom, has leaked the personal information of nearly one million people.

Established in 2003, PowderRoom is a South Korean beauty content platform connecting 3.5 million members and thousands of beauty brands It calls itself the first and the biggest beauty community in South Korea that “allows you to experience new brand products faster than anyone else and share the experience” It exposed up to a million users’ full names, phone numbers, emails, Instagram usernames and home addresses The database was publicly available for over a year Attackers could have exploited the data to launch phishing and device hijacking attacks, make unauthorized purchases, and stalk users Cybernews reached out to PowderRoom and the Korean National Computer Emergency Response Team, and the data was secured

The Cybernews research team discovered that the South Korean social platform, powderroom.co.kr – which markets itself as the nation’s biggest beauty community – was leaking the private data of a million users.

The platform exposed full names, phone numbers, emails, Instagram usernames, and even home addresses. Researchers estimate that the database was publicly available for over a year.

Backed by beauty-product manufacturers, PowderRoom has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, and its Android app has been downloaded more than 100,000 times on Google Play.

On the platform, users can review beauty products while being encouraged to actively participate and receive perks.

Personal data leaked

On December 15, researchers found a publicly accessible database with nearly 140GB of data. Some server logs included entries containing personal information, such as names, phone numbers, and home addresses, along with metadata about user devices and browsers used to access the site. The dataset included over a million email addresses.

Among the leaked data, researchers found a million tokens used for authentication and accessing the website.

Abusing them, threat actors could hijack user accounts and purchase products on the platform using the payment methods linked with the account. Additionally, attackers could modify account details, and post comments and reviews.

Leaking home addresses and phone numbers is a cause of concern, since exposing such information might lead to in-person stalking or harassment of the users of the platform.

If you want to know how to protect yourself, give a look at the original post at: https://cybernews.com/security/powder-room-data-leak/

About the author: Paulina Okunytė, Journalist at CyberNews

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, PowderRoom)

---