Hegseth's license among 153 million multi-spectrum IDs exposed in suspected IDScan.net breach

  • Nexus advertised over 153 million multi-spectrum North American driver's license scans.
  • U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's license was listed for $100.
  • FBI New Orleans opened a formal probe as Nexus went offline.

More than 153 million North American driver's licenses—including infrared and ultraviolet scans used by banks and agencies to authenticate documents—were advertised on dark-web marketplace Nexus in a suspected breach tied to Louisiana identity verification firm IDScan.net. Security journalist Brian Krebs and researcher Zach Edwards matched image timestamps to Hertz rentals and a Planet13 dispensary visit, linking the data to IDScan.net terminals used at car rental desks, cannabis shops, hotels, casinos, and shipping centers that handle more than 21 million verifications monthly. The Exploit forum listing also cited more than 10 million state IDs, more than three million travel documents and international IDs, and at least 579,000 medical cards, spanning more than 170 million people with about 1.1 million Canadian records. Operators claimed continuous exfiltration for over a year, and the driver's license count rose by nearly 400,000 within 24 hours of monitoring. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's license was listed for $100, and an FBI assistant director's license was also reportedly present. The FBI's New Orleans field office opened a formal investigation on September 1, after which Nexus went offline. IDScan.net is investigating with outside counsel, cyber insurers, and forensic support and is coordinating with law enforcement; multi-spectrum images cannot be invalidated by replacing a physical card, heightening forgery and synthetic identity fraud risks.

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