Data of over 220,000 organ pledgers leaked online

SLUCare transplant surgeon Dr. Chintalapati Varma physically grabs the kidney from the body of living organ donor Robyn Rosenberger during surgery on Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2018, at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital. Rosenberger is donating her kidney to Michael Loness, 1 1/2, at Cardinal Glennon Hospital. Michael was born in kidney failure and has been on dialysis since he was just 4 weeks old. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/TNS)

The personal details of over 220,000 organ pledgers in Malaysia has been leaked online. As disclosed by online forum and technology news site lowyat.net, the leaked data contains MyKad numbers, home addresses, telephone numbers of not just the pledgers but that of their next of kin as well.

The source of the information isn’t revealed but the website states that the leaked file contains data updated to Aug 31 2016 and that the leak possibly happened as early as September that year.

It also claims that the leaked information has sign up details from government hospitals as well as National Transplant Resource Centres across Malaysia, possibly dismissing dermaorgan.gov.my as the source of the breach.

Screenshots posted on the website show that the data dump is sectioned according to the year of sign up, from 1997 until 2016. It also shares that the data from 1997 to 2008 are filled with useless auto generated dummy data, while the data from January 2009 up to August 2016 have the complete details of 220,394 pledgers and their nominated next of kin.

The website also posted a screenshot, supposedly a demographic data of the pledgers listed according to sex, race, state of origin, types of organs and age.