Hundreds of e-stores were exposed by an insecure Shopify plugin

The Cybernews research team has discovered that Consentik, a Shopify plugin designed to help merchants comply with privacy laws such as GDPR, LGPD, and CCPA, was exposing hundreds of online stores, broadcasting real-time site analytics and private authentication tokens.

Key research takeaways

  • Hundreds of Shopify storefronts were vulnerable to code injection, data theft, and account takeovers due to an insecure Consentik plugin.
  • The insecure compliance plugin was leaking real-time site analytics and private authentication tokens, including Shopify admin credentials and Facebook ad tokens.
  • The leak was caused by an unsecured Kafka server.
  • The data was available to anyone on the internet for at least 100 days before closure. 

What was leaked?

  • Site analytics data
  • Shopify Personal Access Tokens
  • Facebook Auth Tokens

Significance of this leak 

This data leak puts e-commerce businesses operating in sectors like fashion, cosmetics, fitness, and consumer electronics at risk, and may have allowed anyone to intercept with admin-level access.

In the wrong hands, a valid Shopify token can mean total control of a store, including customer data access, price manipulation, malicious code injection, or even replacing entire storefronts with lookalike phishing pages.

Additionally, these kinds of compromises can seriously damage a brand’s trust with users. In the EU and California, such oversights could bring legal scrutiny, fines, or even class-action litigation.

To read the full research report and see samples of leaked screenshots, please click here.

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