A brand new id theft service launched on the darkish internet this week is promoting digital scans of greater than 153 million drivers licenses from folks 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 photos collected by a widely-used id verification firm primarily based in Louisiana. KrebsOnSecurity additionally has discovered that the New Orleans area workplace of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at the moment launched an official inquiry into the supply of the photographs.
A document accessible at this id theft service that features the drivers license for U.S. Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, certainly one of a number of high-ranking U.S. authorities officers whose drivers licenses might be discovered on the market.
On Monday, Aug. 31, a supply alerted KrebsOnSecurity to a service marketed by a brand new person on the Russian cybercrime discussion board Exploit, providing entry to digital scans of id paperwork on greater than 170 million folks 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 folks 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 at the least 579,000 medical playing cards.
A fast go searching Nexus finds they’re possible not exaggerating about that 153 million quantity: Working 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 folks in each Canada and the USA, however the bulk of those information are on Individuals: 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 embody not solely drivers licenses but in addition marijuana dispensary playing cards. Among the information record their “supply” as “CDL,” presumably quick for “business 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 folks behind Nexus declare the license photos are coming from an energetic breach at “a significant id verification firm” whose clients embody a number of Fortune 500 corporations.
The document totals listed by the Nexus id theft service. The variety of drivers license information elevated by almost 400,000 within the span of simply 24 hours.
“We’ve got been constantly exfiltrating new knowledge for over a 12 months into our non-public database,” the service enthused in its introductory submit on Exploit. “Information can be found to preview earlier than buy with pertinent data redacted. Buyer images are displayed if accessible.”
Certainly, over the previous 24 hours, the variety of drivers license information listed as accessible in Nexus has elevated by almost 400,000, suggesting that freshly stolen license knowledge is being harvested and uploaded to this service on a semi-regular foundation.
The document that options my drivers license consists of six picture information — three pairs of images of the license’s back and front — a primary picture scan — in addition to infrared and ultraviolet variations of the identical photos. A date and timestamp is appended to every picture file, and the timestamp on my license scan corresponds to a date in June 2025 after I took a flight to the midwest United States to attend a household funeral.
Among the 153 million+ license scans — together with mine — characteristic six picture information with date and timestamps appended to the filenames. Not all information embody images, and a few that do characteristic images don’t show the related filenames.
Intent on discovering the supply of this knowledge, KrebsOnSecurity requested greater than a dozen family and friends members for permission to seek for their licenses on this service. Every individual whose license might be discovered (9 of them) confirmed having traveled on or very near the dates within the timestamps hooked up to their photos. 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 believed the supply of the information might need one thing to do with airports. Nevertheless, that concept went out the window when it turned obvious there have been no passports on this knowledge set. Additionally, solely a few of those that helped with this analysis mentioned 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 staff who mentioned they shared different types of authorities identification when passing by airport safety. Nevertheless, these people every mentioned they shared their state-issued drivers licenses later that day when renting automobiles at their respective locations, and that each rented their automobiles from Hertz.
After discovering a observe in my calendar for the day of my June 2025 flight reminding me to deliver my passport, I remembered that I additionally by no means really shared my drivers license after I went by 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 an alternative, I confirmed the TSA agent my government-issued U.S. passport.
Right here’s the place it will get attention-grabbing: I used to be capable of finding my mom’s drivers license on this service as nicely, and the timestamps for her photos are just some seconds aside from mine. That’s notable as a result of we each handed our licenses to the Hertz rental automotive consultant on the identical time.
Based on my mother, the one place she gave her drivers license to that day was the rental automotive firm, and if reminiscence serves that can be true for me. I don’t recall if the rental automotive consultant inserted our licenses into any sort 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 types. KrebsOnSecurity sought remark from Hertz and can replace this story within the occasion they reply.
Zach Edwards is a widely known safety and privateness researcher who lately launched a service known as DecryptAds to assist folks higher perceive how on-line advertisers are monitoring them. A scan of Edwards’s drivers license is offered for buy on this id theft service, and Edwards mentioned the timestamp on his document corresponds to the center of a visit final month to Las Vegas for the annual DEFCON safety convention.
Edwards advised KrebsOnSecurity that though he didn’t hire a automotive in Vegas, he did hand over his license on the TSA checkpoint, at a marijuana dispensary in Vegas, and at his lodge (the Aria). However he mentioned the one a type of three that for positive scanned his ID in some sort of system was the dispensary.
To enter Planet13’s weed dispensary in Las Vegas, one should go by a pink phone sales space. Picture: Zach Edwards.
Edwards mentioned 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.internet revealed a press launch saying 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.internet states that the corporate offers id verification companies for quite a few huge manufacturers, together with Hertz, Goal, Fedex, Motorola Options, the monetary companies large Jack Henry, and Caesars Leisure. And as idscan.internet’s personal documentation states, the know-how scans IDs with each infrared and ultraviolet gentle. Idscan.internet says the corporate’s programs and know-how carry out greater than 21 million verifications month-to-month, at greater than 20,000 areas all over the world.
Picture: idscan.internet.
Contacted by KrebsOnSecurity, idscan.internet mentioned it was investigating the matter, however the firm has not but shared an official assertion or a substantive reply to particular questions despatched through e-mail.
“At this level I’m not in a position to share any extra data, however the updates you’ve gotten supplied have been welcome, and useful to our workforce’s investigation,” wrote Jillian Kossman, a advertising and operations chief at idscan.internet.
Through the course of my analysis for this story, phrase acquired round to the FBI that I used to be poking on the obvious supply of this new id theft service’s knowledge. In all probability they have been tipped off after 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 the moment their New Orleans area workplace opened an official investigation into an obvious breach involving idscan.internet.
Edwards mentioned that as extra in-person and on-line experiences require sharing drivers licenses, distributors who accumulate this delicate knowledge should be held to a better customary.
“This episode ought to additional strengthen the resolve for people who find themselves combating again towards on-line ID schemes that are requiring numerous suppliers to ask for drivers licenses with the intention to entry companies below the guise of defending children,” Edwards advised KrebsOnSecurity. “These programs are placing delicate knowledge into increasingly third celebration distributors, and we don’t have almost the oversight to make sure they’re protected.”
Larry Baldwin is principal intelligence researcher on the cybersecurity agency Cybera. Baldwin mentioned a back and front scan of his drivers license accessible at Nexus comprises timestamps that correspond to the date of a automotive rental from Hertz on a current trip.
Baldwin mentioned 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 traces of credit score. Baldwin mentioned the service might additionally dangerously expose many individuals who don’t want to be discovered however who can’t meaningfully change their look (or at the least not sufficient to idiot at the moment’s AI-based picture matching instruments).
This class of individuals, he mentioned, consists of these fleeing home violence, and even individuals who have been assigned a complete new life and id as a part of the federal authorities’s witness safety program, which is mostly 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 by drivers license verification programs, this occurs and the very factor these enhancements are depending on are compromised,” Baldwin mentioned.
Replace, Sept. 2, 6:05 p.m. ET: A spokesperson for Caesars Leisure mentioned Caesars has not been a consumer of IDScan.internet and has not used VeriScan since February 2025, regardless of IDScan.internet itemizing them as a consumer on their web site. That individual mentioned Caesars had no energetic VeriScan accounts on the time of the incident and didn’t authorize IDScan.internet to retain knowledge from its accounts, and that IDScan.internet mentioned the incident should not have any affect 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 now not accessible.”
It is a probably fast-moving story. Any adjustments or updates will probably be famous right here together with a timestamp.
