Data of millions of driver's license holders from the US and Canada was leaked to the dark web.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched an investigation into reports of the possible theft and sale of personal data of millions of driver's license holders from the US and Canada on the dark web, it reports. USA TodayThe service's database even includes a record of US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's driver's license—he's just one of several high-ranking US officials whose documents are up for sale, the page says. Krebs on Security.

Advertisements for the sale of digital copies of more than 153 million driver's licenses belonging to residents of the United States and Canada were posted on the Nexus platform. The leak was first reported by the blog Krebs on Security, run by former Washington Post cybersecurity specialist Brian Krebs.

According to Krebs, he was able to confirm the authenticity of at least nine driver's licenses listed for sale on the website. Shortly after his report was published on September 2, the Nexus website disappeared from the dark web.

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The FBI said it was looking into the incident but declined to release details, citing the ongoing investigation.

The source of the data leak has not yet been identified.

Krebs pointed to idscan.net, a Louisiana-based ID verification company, as a possible source of the leak. A representative from the company assured him that they were conducting their own investigation.

"On August 31st, a source informed Krebs on Security about a service advertised by a new user on the Russian-language cybercriminal forum Exploit, offering access to digital copies of the IDs of over 170 million people in North America. The source was drawn to this because the service's owner posted the author's own Virginia driver's license as a free sample in the forum's opening thread," wrote Brian Krebs.

A service called Nexus claims to have more than 153 million driver's licenses from the US and Canada, over 10 million ID cards, more than 3 million travel documents and international driving permits, and at least 579,000 health records.

A quick check reveals that the 153 million figure is likely not an exaggeration: with a bare-bones search query, the system returns approximately 11,5 million pages of results, with approximately 15 records per page. The database contains documents for both Canadian and American citizens, but the majority are US citizens: a search for Canadian IDs alone yields approximately 1,1 million results, with the largest number of records coming from the province of Ontario—473,673.

Interestingly, the database contains not only driver's licenses but also cannabis store customer cards. Some entries list "CDL" in the "source" column, likely referring to a commercial driver's license. Others list "CAC," which may stand for a Common Access Card—an identification card issued by government agencies that grants access to government buildings and secure facilities.

In an attempt to identify the source of the leak, Krebs on Security, with the permission of more than a dozen friends and relatives, checked their IDs against the database. Nine people found their documents, and all confirmed they traveled on dates that matched or were close to the timestamps listed. The time zone used for the timestamps is unclear, but a comparison with car rental data shows that they are in Greenwich Mean Time.

Initially, it was suspected that the leak was related to airports, but this was disproved when it was discovered that the database contained no passports. Furthermore, not all of the individuals involved in the search had presented their driver's licenses at the airport. One individual had never flown, but had rented a car from Hertz several months earlier, around the date indicated in the tag.

Security and privacy researcher Zach Edwards, who recently launched DecryptAds, a service for tracking online advertising, also found his driver's license in the database. He says the timestamp matches his trip to Las Vegas for the DEFCON conference last month.

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Edwards claimed he didn't rent a car, but he did show his ID at TSA security, at the cannabis store, and at the Aria Hotel. He added, "The document was definitely scanned by the device only at the store."

USA Today was unable to independently confirm Krebs' claims and contacted idscan.net for comment.

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