“A few days ago, I came across pages on the dark web and breach forums that sell scanned or photographed passports from all over the world. Among them, of course, are passports from our country,” wrote ethical hacker Arnela Sabovic on her LinkedIn profile.
People involved in ethical hacking use their computer skills for the benefit of society, and Arnela pointed out that there are many places on the dark web where photographed documents of Bosnian and Herzegovinian (BiH) citizens are being sold.
According to Arnela, she checked whether the individuals whose passports were exposed were real and concluded that they were.
“Out of curiosity, but also professional responsibility, I decided to verify the authenticity of some of them and confirmed that these are not generic forgeries or poorly edited images from the internet, but actual documents belonging to real people. Now, people will probably ask how they ended up there. There are countless ways… hacked databases, insider fraud, travel agencies, hotels, careless sharing of scans via email, etc.,” she wrote on her LinkedIn profile.
Sabovic also revealed and zoomed in on the passport of a girl from Sarajevo, whose passport is still valid.
“Still, some people think this can’t happen to them. But trust me, the reality is brutal – because it can. And maybe it already has,” she concluded.
What you should know: The dark web is a part of the internet that is not indexed by standard search engines like Google or Bing. It can only be accessed through specific tools, such as Tor (The Onion Router), which enable anonymity and conceal users’ identities. The dark web hosts various types of content, including illegal activities such as drug trafficking, weapons sales, stolen data trade, and other illicit services, N1 writes.
