Passports and other identity documents belonging to hundreds of Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW) attendees have been posted online. High-profile attendees of the December 2025 event from the cryptocurrency, international finance, and political sectors had their personal information compromised in the security breach. Over 35,000 people attended the event.According to documents reviewed by the Financial Times (FT), scans of more than 700 passports and state identity cards were found on an unprotected cloud storage server linked to the state-sponsored investment conference. This includes data of former British Prime Minister Lord David Cameron, billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard, and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci. Other prominent individuals whose details were disclosed included Richard Teng, co-chief executive of crypto exchange Binance and former chief of ADGM, and Lucie Berger, the EU’s ambassador to the UAE, the FT reports, citing a sample of files reviewed.

Researcher claims ADFW data was easily accessible online

Roni Suchowski, a freelance security researcher and consultant, identified the issue and said that the exposed data could be accessed by anyone using a standard web browser. After the FT contacted ADFW about the data exposure this week, the server was secured. Cybersecurity experts said the lapse could harm the Gulf state’s reputation, which frequently hosts international conferences and emphasises its security arrangements.Suchowski identified the data exposure using commonly available software that scans cloud services for unsecured information. He said the dataset, which included tens of thousands of publicly accessible files, such as passports, ID cards, and ADFW invoices, was likely exposed for at least two months. He added that earlier attempts to alert ADFW had been unsuccessful, which prompted him to contact the FT.“Responsible disclosure is crucial” in cases of data breaches to protect affected individuals, Suchowski told the publication. “The goal is always to notify the organisation privately and give them the opportunity to fix the issue before it is abused,”the researcher added.Complete passport scans can be valuable to fraudsters operating on the dark web. These documents can be combined with other personal information to facilitate identity theft, targeted phishing attempts, or unauthorised access to online accounts.In a statement to FT, ADFW confirmed “a vulnerability in a third-party vendor-managed storage environment relating to a limited subset of ADFW 2025 attendees. ADFW takes, and has always taken, data protection and platform security extremely seriously, and any breaches of security are also taken with utmost seriousness. The environment was secured immediately upon identification, and our initial review indicates that access activity was limited to the researcher that identified the issue.”Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, described the ADFW cyber security incident as a “blunder”. He said such a “basic and simplemistakeruns counter to how the state likes to present itself.”ADFW said it had contacted the affected attendees to inform them about the data breach. One ADFW attendee said they were shocked by what they described as a “massive data breach”,calling it “pretty appalling”.ADFW has positioned itself as a platform for engaging the global financial community as it works to attract hedge funds and asset managers to its expanding financial centre. The event is organised by ADGM, Abu Dhabi’s financial centre, which said that “total assets represented during the week surpassed $62 trillion”.The ADFW event held was attended by Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and was promoted across social media platforms. ADFW previously said the event featured speakers including UAE government ministers and senior executives from financial institutions such as UBS, Blackstone, Standard Chartered, Barclays, Morgan Stanley, Temasek, Bridgewater, Carlyle, and Man Group. Representatives from crypto companies, including Tether and Crypto.co,m were also present.