Eventually, everybody gets a turn at an embarrassing internal data breach. Today, it’s Groupon’s turn. The popular deal-of-the-day Web site’s Indian subsidiary SoSasta has reportedly accidentally published its entire user database to the Internet. It was then indexed by Google (News - Alert).

The Web site RiskyBiz (http://risky.biz/sosasta) has reported that the leaked database includes some personal information for about 300,000 users, including e-mail addresses and clear-text (as opposed to encrypted) passwords. The breach was discovered by Australian security consultant Daniel Grzelak as he searched for publicly accessible databases containing e-mail address and password pairs, reported RiskyBiz’s Patrick Gray. Grzelak used Google to search for SQL database files that were Web accessible and contained keywords like “password” and “gmail.”

“A few hours and tweaks later, this database came up,” said Grzelak “I started scrolling, and scrolling and I couldn’t get to the bottom of the file. Then I realized how big it actually was.”

In response, Groupon is encouraging SoSasta users to immediately change their user names and passwords, and has assured them that no financial information was compromised in the breach because none is stored on the site, reported TechCrunch.

SoSasta works in a similar manner to Groupon, offering localized daily discounts on products and services. The site can be customized for residents of most of India’s major cities, including Kolkata, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Chandigarh, Jaipur and Ahmedabad. The site’s name is derived from a clever wordplay: “Sasta” means “cheap” in Sanskrit, so “SoSasta” basically translates to “That’s so cheap!”

Groupon says it has launched an internal investigation over the incident.

(Important note: while RiskyBiz is reporting that the breach was an accident, TechCrunch is reporting it as a deliberate hack.)

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