Unprotected database exposed over 250K legal documents labeled as ‘Not designated for publication’

From cyware.com

The leaky database contained 257,287 legal documents with some documents labeled as ‘not designated for publication.
Even though the owner of the database remains unclear, the open database was secured after almost 2 weeks.

What is the issue – A security researcher named Bob Diachenko uncovered an ElasticSearch instance that was publicly accessible without any password protection.

Why it matters – The leaky database contained 257,287 legal documents with some documents labeled as ‘not designated for publication’. The documents are related to US court cases, usually exchanged between lawyers and the court.

“Cases are from 2002-2010 era, from all over the [US] States. Most docs are public, but about 30%-40% of it is ‘unpublished opinion’ or ‘not designated for publication,” Diachenko told ZDNet.