A brand new id theft service launched on the darkish net this week is promoting digital scans of greater than 153 million drivers licenses from individuals in the USA and Canada. Primarily based on interviews with people whose licenses can be found for buy on this service, it seems to be siphoning pictures collected by a widely-used id verification firm primarily based in Louisiana. KrebsOnSecurity additionally has realized that the New Orleans discipline workplace of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at present launched an official inquiry into the supply of the pictures.
A report accessible at this id theft service that features the drivers license for U.S. Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, one among a number of high-ranking U.S. authorities officers whose drivers licenses may be discovered on the market.
On Monday, Aug. 31, a supply alerted KrebsOnSecurity to a service marketed by a brand new consumer on the Russian cybercrime discussion board Exploit, providing entry to digital scans of id paperwork on greater than 170 million individuals in North America. The supply introduced it to my consideration as a result of the proprietor of this id theft service provided my Virginia drivers license as a free pattern of their preliminary gross sales thread on Exploit.
The service, dubbed Nexus, claims to have greater than 153 million drivers licenses for individuals in the USA and Canada, in addition to greater than 10 million identification playing cards; greater than three million journey paperwork and/or worldwide IDs; and a minimum of 579,000 medical playing cards.
A fast go searching Nexus finds they’re probably not exaggerating about that 153 million quantity: Operating a clean search in Nexus (with no search parameters entered) returns roughly 11.5 million pages of outcomes, with roughly 15 outcomes displayed per web page. It consists of paperwork from individuals in each Canada and the USA, however the bulk of those information are on People: looking for simply Canadian drivers licenses returns roughly 1.1 million outcomes, with the biggest focus from Ontario (473,673 information).
Curiously, the id information embrace not solely drivers licenses but additionally marijuana dispensary playing cards. A number of the information record their “supply” as “CDL,” presumably brief for “industrial drivers license.” Different information carry the supply notation of “CAC,” which can confer with Widespread Entry Playing cards, authorities issued id playing cards that grant bodily entry to authorities buildings and safe rooms.
The individuals behind Nexus declare the license pictures are coming from an energetic breach at “a significant id verification firm” whose clients embrace a number of Fortune 500 firms.
The report totals listed by the Nexus id theft service. The variety of drivers license information elevated by practically 400,000 within the span of simply 24 hours.
“We’ve got been repeatedly exfiltrating new information for over a 12 months into our personal database,” the service enthused in its introductory publish on Exploit. “Information can be found to preview earlier than buy with pertinent data redacted. Buyer photographs are displayed if accessible.”
Certainly, over the previous 24 hours, the variety of drivers license information listed as accessible in Nexus has elevated by practically 400,000, suggesting that freshly stolen license information is being harvested and uploaded to this service on a semi-regular foundation.
The report that options my drivers license consists of six picture recordsdata — three pairs of photographs of the license’s back and front — a primary picture scan — in addition to infrared and ultraviolet variations of the identical pictures. A date and timestamp is appended to every picture file, and the timestamp on my license scan corresponds to a date in June 2025 once I took a flight to the midwest United States to attend a household funeral.
A number of the 153 million+ license scans — together with mine — function six picture recordsdata with date and timestamps appended to the filenames. Not all information embrace photographs, and a few that do function photographs don’t show the related filenames.
Intent on discovering the supply of this information, KrebsOnSecurity requested greater than a dozen family and friends members for permission to seek for their licenses on this service. Every individual whose license may very well be discovered (9 of them) confirmed having traveled on or very near the dates within the timestamps hooked up to their pictures. It’s unclear what timezone these timestamps are in, however from reviewing automotive rental information shared by a number of individuals who helped with this analysis, it seems the timezone is about to Greenwich Imply Time (GMT).
At first, I assumed the supply of the information may need one thing to do with airports. Nevertheless, that idea went out the window when it grew to become obvious there have been no passports on this information set. Additionally, solely a few of those that helped with this analysis stated they confirmed their drivers license on the airport on the day of their journey. One individual whose license was in Nexus hadn’t flown in any respect lately, however was renting a automotive from Hertz for a number of months across the date of their timestamp.
Two of those that agreed to assist are federal workers who stated they shared different types of authorities identification when passing via airport safety. Nevertheless, these people every stated they shared their state-issued drivers licenses later that day when renting autos at their respective locations, and that each rented their vehicles from Hertz.
After discovering a observe in my calendar for the day of my June 2025 flight reminding me to carry my passport, I remembered that I additionally by no means truly shared my drivers license once I went via safety at Reagan Nationwide Airport on that day as a result of I didn’t but have a Actual ID, a security-enhanced drivers license that’s now required by the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) for all home journey. As a substitute, I confirmed the TSA agent my government-issued U.S. passport.
Right here’s the place it will get fascinating: I used to be capable of finding my mom’s drivers license on this service as nicely, and the timestamps for her pictures are only a few seconds aside from mine. That’s notable as a result of we each handed our licenses to the Hertz rental automotive consultant on the similar time.
In accordance with my mother, the one place she gave her drivers license to that day was the rental automotive firm, and if reminiscence serves that can also be true for me. I don’t recall if the rental automotive consultant inserted our licenses into any form of machine, however I keep in mind they held onto them for a number of minutes behind the counter whereas we have been signing varied kinds. KrebsOnSecurity sought remark from Hertz and can replace this story within the occasion they reply.
Zach Edwards is a well known safety and privateness researcher who lately launched a service referred to as DecryptAds to assist individuals higher perceive how on-line advertisers are monitoring them. A scan of Edwards’s drivers license is on the market for buy on this id theft service, and Edwards stated the timestamp on his report corresponds to the center of a visit final month to Las Vegas for the annual DEFCON safety convention.
Edwards instructed KrebsOnSecurity that though he didn’t lease a automotive in Vegas, he did hand over his license on the TSA checkpoint, at a marijuana dispensary in Vegas, and at his resort (the Aria). However he stated the one a kind of three that for certain scanned his ID in some form of machine was the dispensary.
To enter Planet13’s weed dispensary in Las Vegas, one should go via a pink phone sales space. Picture: Zach Edwards.
Edwards stated the dispensary he visited that day was Planet13, a multi-state chain with shops in California, Florida, Illinois and Nevada. In 2022, the New Orleans-based id supplier idscan.web revealed a press launch asserting an unique id verification settlement with Planet13’s dispensaries nationally. IDScan says it processes ID verification for greater than 1,000 marijuana dispensaries in 19 U.S. states.
The “belief” web page of idscan.web states that the corporate gives id verification providers for quite a few large manufacturers, together with Hertz, Goal, Fedex, Motorola Options, the monetary providers big Jack Henry, and Caesars Leisure. And as idscan.web’s personal documentation states, the know-how scans IDs with each infrared and ultraviolet gentle. Idscan.web says the corporate’s methods and know-how carry out greater than 21 million verifications month-to-month, at greater than 20,000 places around the globe.
Picture: idscan.web.
Contacted by KrebsOnSecurity, idscan.web stated it was investigating the matter, however the firm has not but shared an official assertion or a substantive reply to particular questions despatched by way of e-mail.
“At this level I’m not capable of share any further data, however the updates you’ve got supplied have been welcome, and useful to our group’s investigation,” wrote Jillian Kossman, a advertising and operations chief at idscan.web.
In the course of the course of my analysis for this story, phrase bought round to the FBI that I used to be poking on the obvious supply of this new id theft service’s information. In all probability they have been tipped off once I shared with a trusted supply that Nexus is also promoting the drivers license data for the assistant director of the FBI (I didn’t discover FBI Director Kash Patel’s license in Nexus).
Earlier this afternoon, I used to be added to a convention name with a half-dozen FBI brokers, together with senior leaders from the company’s cyber division. Throughout that decision, the FBI shared that earlier at present their New Orleans discipline workplace opened an official investigation into an obvious breach involving idscan.web.
Edwards stated that as extra in-person and on-line experiences require sharing drivers licenses, distributors who acquire this delicate information have to be held to a better commonplace.
“This episode ought to additional strengthen the resolve for people who find themselves preventing again in opposition to on-line ID schemes that are requiring numerous suppliers to ask for drivers licenses with a view to entry providers beneath the guise of defending youngsters,” Edwards instructed KrebsOnSecurity. “These methods are placing delicate information into increasingly more third celebration distributors, and we don’t have practically the oversight to make sure they’re protected.”
Larry Baldwin is principal intelligence researcher on the cybersecurity agency Cybera. Baldwin stated a back and front scan of his drivers license accessible at Nexus incorporates timestamps that correspond to the date of a automotive rental from Hertz on a current trip.
Baldwin stated the Nexus id theft service presents a number of critical safety and privateness threats, noting that state-issued drivers licenses are generally used as proof of 1’s id when opening new strains of credit score. Baldwin stated the service might additionally dangerously expose many individuals who don’t want to be discovered however who can not meaningfully change their look (or a minimum of not sufficient to idiot at present’s AI-based picture matching instruments).
This class of individuals, he stated, consists of these fleeing home violence, and even individuals who have been assigned an entire new life and id as a part of the federal authorities’s witness safety program, which is usually reserved for felony defendants in racketeering and conspiracy investigations who comply with cooperate with federal authorities.
“Simply when it looks like we’re making some headway in enhancing authentication controls via drivers license verification methods, this occurs and the very factor these enhancements are depending on are compromised,” Baldwin stated.
Replace, Sept. 2, 6:05 p.m. ET: A spokesperson for Caesars Leisure stated Caesars has not been a shopper of IDScan.web and has not used VeriScan since February 2025, regardless of IDScan.web itemizing them as a shopper on their web site. That individual stated Caesars had no energetic VeriScan accounts on the time of the incident and didn’t authorize IDScan.web to retain information from its accounts, and that IDScan.web stated the incident should not have any influence on Caesars Leisure.
Replace, 8:56 p.m. ET: Shortly after this story was revealed, the Nexus id theft service web site vanished from the darkweb, changing its login web page with a plain textual content message that reads, “This service is not accessible.”
This can be a doubtlessly fast-moving story. Any modifications or updates can be famous right here together with a timestamp.
