FBI Probes Dark-Web Sale of More Than 153 Million U.S., Canadian Driver's Licenses

The FBI said it was investigating a report that tens of millions of driver's licenses belonging to people in the United States and Canada were being sold on the dark web.

The FBI is investigating the reported sale of millions of US and Canadian driver's license scans on a dark-web marketplace. [Photo: CactusHills, Wikimedia Commons]

Independent journalist Brian Krebs recently reported that he had discovered a dark-web site selling digital scans of more than 153 million driver's licenses from people in the US and Canada, Raphael Satter reported for Reuters.

Krebs said he confirmed the authenticity of the data with nine people whose licenses appeared in the database.

In a brief statement, the FBI said it was "looking into the incident" but could not comment "due to the ongoing nature of the investigation."

If confirmed, the breach could rank among the largest exposures of government-issued identity documents in North America, creating significant risks of identity theft and fraud.

Krebs said he was alerted to the site after it was advertised on a Russian cybercrime forum, with his own driver's license offered as a free sample.

Krebs said the service, dubbed Nexus, claimed to have tens of millions of licenses belonging to people in the US and Canada, along with millions of other identification cards and travel documents and hundreds of thousands of medical records.

The site appeared to be updating its database of stolen data in real time, suggesting that the information could have been coming from an ongoing breach.

Zach Edwards, a threat researcher at cybersecurity company Infoblox, described the incident as unprecedented in its scale.

The apparent source of the data has not been officially confirmed. Krebs reported evidence pointing toward Louisiana-based identity-verification company, IDScan.net, but the company had not confirmed that its systems were breached at the time of the reports.