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Rabat – Passports and identity documents belonging to hundreds of prominent figures in finance, politics, and cryptocurrency were exposed online following a data lapse linked to Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW), the Financial Times has reported.
Scans of more than 700 passports and state identity cards were discovered on an unprotected cloud storage server associated with the state-sponsored investment conference, which took place in December and hosted more than 35,000 attendees. The files were publicly accessible through a standard web browser.
Among those whose documents were exposed were former British prime minister David Cameron, billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard, and US investor and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, according to documents reviewed by the Financial Times.
Also included in the small sample of files examined were Richard Teng, co-chief executive of crypto exchange Binance and former head of Abu Dhabi Global Market, and Lucie Berger, the European Union’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.
The leak was identified by Roni Suchowski, a freelance security researcher, who said the material had likely been accessible for at least two months. He said he had previously attempted to notify organizers without success before contacting the Financial Times.
“The goal is always to notify the organisation privately and give them the opportunity to fix the issue before it is abused,” he told the outlet.
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After the newspaper approached ADFW on Monday, the server was secured.
The event is organized by Abu Dhabi Global Market, the emirate’s financial center, which has positioned the conference as a flagship gathering for the international investment community. ADGM previously said total assets represented during the week exceeded $62 trillion.
In a statement, ADFW confirmed a vulnerability in a third-party vendor-managed storage environment affecting what it described as a limited subset of 2025 attendees.
It said the environment was secured immediately upon identification and that an initial review indicated access activity was limited to the researcher who discovered the issue. The organization added that affected attendees had been contacted.
The exposed files included passport scans, state identity cards, and other documents among tens of thousands of publicly accessible records, including invoices.
Cybersecurity specialists said complete passport scans can be used for identity theft, phishing campaigns, and unauthorized access to online accounts.
One attendee described the incident as a massive data breach and said it was appalling. Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, called the lapse a blunder and said such a basic error ran counter to the way the state presents itself.
