Taiwan busts hacking ring, 50 million personal records compromised
Summary: Taiwan's Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) has successfully tracked down and arrested six people in what the CIB believes to be the biggest personal data breach in Taiwan to date.
Taiwan's Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) has successfully tracked down and arrested six people in what the CIB
believes to be the biggest personal data breach in Taiwan to date. Apparently, the group also managed to obtain personal data on Taiwan's current and former presidents :
"The suspects are believed to have stolen more than 50 million records of personal data, including information about President Ma Ying-jeou, his predecessor Chen Shui-bian and police chief Wang Cho-chiun, the official said. They then offered to sell the information for 300 Taiwan dollars (10 US) per entry, he said. The hackers, based in Taiwan and China, also swindled victims out of millions of Taiwan dollars through their online bank accounts, he said."
The announcement comes a week after China detected a sophisticated fake diploma scheme, where ten government databases were compromised.
This particular data breach seems to very similar to the "whether to attack the bank or its customers as the weakest link" dilemma malicious attackers used to face once. Basically, the same amount of information can be obtained by targeting the weakest link, in this case the end users, whose once crimeware infected hosts ends up in a cybercrime as a service underground proposition. Take for instance the 76service, which recently reappeared as an alternative for cybercriminals not wanting to take the time and effort to build botnets, but still wanting to rent one and intercept all the personal and financial information they can during the a particular period of time. With geolocation within botnet for hire services now a daily reality, someone interested in intercepting data from a particular country only, can easily do so.
As for the people behind this hacking ring, asking for 10 USD per data entry clearly indicates their isolation from the underground marketplace, as in reality, what they are offering may already be available somewhere else in a wholesale proposition, or requested on demand at a cheaper price.
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Talkback
When firewalls don't work
RE: Taiwan busts hacking ring, 50 million personal records compromised
Heck, I'll proofread for them, if they like
I suppose that if they were making enough money out of the blogs, they could hire a team of editors, but blogs is blogs, take 'em as they come.
If something is particularly confusing or is an egregious error, let the authors know, tactfully. If they have time, perhaps they'll fix the errors. Otherwise, these foolks need to work for a living, and are not, for the most part, full-time journalists.
Heck, I see worse writing in daily print journalism, aka newspapers. They also tend to write at a third-grade level, and they have full-time editors. Go figure.
And now...
is severe--enough to have at least some deterrent value.
Yeah, I know, unlikely on both counts.
RE: Taiwan busts hacking ring, 50 million personal records compromised
RE: Taiwan busts hacking ring, 50 million personal records compromised
Pure incompetence !
This shows a lot ppl are working on WRONG job (doing all wrong naturally) ! Well, this common (read: Gov's jobs) in every place in the world (sigh!).