The cybersecurity investigation team at SafetyDetectives, led by Anurag Sen, discovered a misconfigured Elasticsearch server that exposed Transact Campus app data. According to their findings, the server was internet-connected and did not require a password to access data. As a result, over 1 million records were compromised, disclosing personally identifiable information for roughly 30,000 to 40,000 students. 

Transact Campus is a payment software supplier based in Phoenix, Arizona. The firm provides technology solutions for combining several payment functions into a single mobile platform. Its software solutions are primarily used to expedite payment procedures for universities and students and to facilitate student purchases at higher education establishments. 

According to the report by SafetyDetectives, the 5GB database released by the server contains information about students who had Transact Campus accounts. The majority of those affected are US citizens. The following details of students among the information were exposed: 

It should be noted that the login information, including the username and password, was saved in plain text format. The credit card information, on the other hand, includes the banking identity number, which consists of the first six and final four digits of the credit card number, bank information, and the card's expiration date. Furthermore, the bought meal plans and meal plan balances of the students were included in the hacked data. 

SafetyDetectives notified Transact Campus about the exposed database in December 2021, and the corporation responded in January 2022, more than a month later. However, the incident's specifics were only revealed last week. 

During this time, researchers attempted to contact them multiple times and also alerted US-CERT, after which it was secured. Transact Campus stated that the disclosed server was not under their control and that the data was fictitious. The corrupted Elasticsearch database appeared to belong to Transact Campus, a US-based software solution company. 

Transact Campus stated, “Apparently this was set up by a third party for a demo and was never taken down. We did confirm that the dataset was filled with a fake data set and not using any production data.” 

However, according to SafetyDetectives, the server in issue was constantly being updated even when it was found. They examined the data using freely available technologies and discovered that it belonged to genuine persons. 

Researchers were unable to determine whether or not unauthorised third parties or malicious actors gained access to the database before it was secured. If it was accessible, hackers might target students in a variety of attacks, such as frauds, phishing, spam marketing, or even account takeover, because login credentials were saved on the server in an unencrypted form.