The data extortion group World Leaks has just leaked a huge 1.3-terabyte trove of data stolen from US computer maker Dell Technologies Inc.
Dell confirmed a breach earlier, saying that it impacted the company’s Customer Solution Centers platform, an environment designed to showcase product demos.
According to Dell’s statements to media, the lost data was “primarily synthetic,” although they noted their investigation was ongoing.
What’s in the Leaked Data?
According to a report from Hackread.com, the full leak includes 416,103 files, all publically available for download on the official World Leaks website.
The files look like data from Dell’s global network, according to this report, and include employee folders, software tools, infrastructure scripts, backup data, and more.
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“Many of the files mention Dell Technologies and its products, such as PowerPath, PowerStore, and firmware for Dell-branded hardware. There are also references to VMware tools, automation scripts written in Terraform, and files linked to system monitoring and internal testing.”
Hackread.com further notes that structured naming suggests this data “is pulled from real corporate systems.”
Upon a quick review, the files don’t appear to contain sensitive corporate or customer data.
Dell is no stranger to data breaches, however: Just last year, we covered a different breach at the company. It reportedly exposed the private information of more than 10,000 employees and their partners, including full names, employee status and internal IDs.
Dell Statement Calls Data “Primarily Synthetic”
In a statement to The Register, Dell stated that the bad actor’s unauthorized access was to the Solution Center, which is “intentionally separated” from customer systems.
“A threat actor recently gained access to our Solution Center, an environment designed to demonstrate our products and test proofs-of-concept for Dell’s commercial customers. It is intentionally separated from customer and partner systems, as well as Dell’s networks and is not used in the provision of services to Dell customers.” -Dell spokesperson
Other outlets including Hackread.com and BleepingComputer reported similar statements. According to the tech giant, the data is “primarily synthetic, publicly available or Dell systems/test data.”
Dell didn’t offer further specifics on how much data was stolen or what ransom may have been asked for.
Will Hackers Skip Ransomware Encryption Entirely?
The self-proclaimed culprit behind the new breach, World Leaks, is the rebranded name of a group once called the “Hunters International ransomware gang” — they’re now skipping the ransomware element of the data-extortion scheme, possibly to streamline the illegal process.
A February report from cryptocurrency tracing firm Chainalysis found that ransomware payments had dropped dramatically between 2023 and 2024: Hackers were paid out a total of $321 million from July through December of last year, compared to $492 million during the same period in 2023.
If this new breach is any indication, however, hackers can still wreak havoc without bothering with the data encryption process that defines ransomware, and they may even get more attention by fully leaking the data online — even if there’s no indication just yet that they’ll actually get the payout that they are after.
