Two million terrorist watchlist records leaked online

The watchlist came from the Terrorist Screening Centre (TSC), a multi-agency group administered by the FBI. "The TSC maintains the country's no-fly list, which is a subset of the larger watchlist. A typical record in the list contains full name, citizenship, gender, date of birth, passport number, no-fly indicator, and more," he wrote. The cyber security researcher reported the matter to the Department of Homeland Security, which acknowledged the incident. "The DHS did not provide any further official comment, though," he said. Also read | Amid third wave concerns, Centre restricts export of Covid-19 rapid antigen testing kits The files were indexed by multiple search engines in an easily readable format. The exposed server was taken down about three weeks later, on August 9. The list was left accessible on an Elasticsearch cluster that had no password on it. What is terrorist watchlist: It is made up of people who are suspected of terrorism, but who have not necessarily been charged with any crime. If it falls in wrong hands, this list could be used to oppress, harass or persecute people mentioned on the list and their families. It could cause any number of personal and professional problems for innocent people whose names are included in the list. The Terrorist Screening Centre (TSC): It was set up by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2003. The TSC maintains a watchlist of suspected terrorists. The notorious no-fly list is a subset of the TSC watchlist. The watchlist is supposed to be classified, with access only granted to "agencies and officials who are authorised to conduct terrorist screening in the course of their duties". -PTC News with inputs from agencies