The FIA World Endurance Championship has released a statement today in response to the Cybernews article earlier this week, which revealed that Le Mans Endurance Management had left the personal data of hundreds of drivers exposed.
The original story states that Cybernews’ researchers “came across two misconfigured, meaning publicly exposed, Google Cloud Storage buckets. Both combined, they contained over 1.1 million files.
“Among them were hundreds of passports, government-issued IDs, and drivers’ licenses belonging to FIA World Endurance Championship (FIA WEC) drivers.”
The story later goes on to explain that Cybernews reached out to LMEM and the local data protection authority (CNIL in France) for an official comment. The CNIL said it had “not received any complaints or reports” about the case.
DSC approached the FIA WEC for comment on the story and has been sent the following statement this afternoon, which reads:
“We were recently made aware that some confidential team and driver data was in risk of a security breach. While no data was leaked, we have put extra measures in place to ensure this potential breach in security is no longer a risk.
“The FIA WEC assures its teams and drivers that we have taken this matter very seriously.”
DSC also asked the FIA WEC whether or not the data of anyone else involved in the championship – such as staff or the wider associated media – was also at risk.
According to the FIA WEC, further personal data not related to competitors stored on the WEC’s website is on a “separate channel from the other team data and not at risk.”
In addition to releasing the above media statement, the FIA WEC has also reached out to all the teams today separately to provide further clarity on the matter.
The note sent includes a full timeline of the situation and a breakdown of all the actions the championship has taken since it was first made aware of the issue.
