Impact & Downstream Threats
This breach carries critical risk due to the nature of exposed data fields and the scale of affected records.
- Identity theft and synthetic identity construction using government-issued IDs
- Identity verification bypass using name + date of birth combination
- SIM swap attacks where phone numbers are present
- Targeted phishing campaigns using exposed email addresses
- Doxxing risk from physical address exposure
- Employment-based social engineering using job and employer data
Breach Intelligence
Executive Summary
In March 2017, a 27GB database backup file named "Master Deeds" was sent to HIBP by a supporter of the project. Upon detailed analysis later that year, the file was found to contain the personal data of tens of millions of living and deceased South African residents. The data included extensive personal attributes such as names, addresses, ethnicities, genders, birth dates, government issued personal identification numbers and 2.2 million email addresses. At the time of publishing, it's alleged the data was sourced from Dracore Data Sciences (Dracore is yet to publicly confirm or deny the data was sourced from their systems). On 18 October 2017, the file was found to have been published to a publicly accessible web server where it was located at the root of an IP address with directory listing enabled. The file was dated 8 April 2015.
About Master Deeds
Master Deeds is an organization whose data was exposed in this breach. The dataset has been verified by ObscureIQ intelligence and indexed across breach notification platforms.
Data Points Exposed
Dark Web Verification
Status: Confirmed
- Dataset containing approximately 2.3M records identified in breach intelligence sources.
- The data is indexed and searchable across breach notification platforms.
Recommended Actions
⚠️ Do not assume this is low sensitivity.
Non-clients may request a breach impact review.
Frequently Asked Questions
In March 2017, Master Deeds experienced a data breach that exposed approximately 2.3M records containing personal information.
The exposed data includes fields such as date of birth, deceased statuses, email address, employer, ethnicity or race:ethnicity.
Approximately 2.3M records were affected based on current breach intelligence.
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- A public-facing individual
- A high-profile executive
- A customer of Master Deeds
- Or concerned about credential reuse
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