Singaporean jailed for illegally accessing SingTel's database

A local man has been jailed for gaining unauthorized access to local telco SingTel's database.

According to a report on Friday by local newspaper The Straits Times, the 26-year-old Singaporean Remy Lee was a former employee of Novel Communication, which is a SingTel authorized dealer. His employment provided him access to the SingTel Portal for Electronic Allocation and Registration (SPEAR), allowing him to perform data searches on SingTel's subscriber database by keying in a user's ID number.

On March 12, 2012, Lee had agreed to help a loanshark runner, Chua Jin Cheng, to perform screening of ID numbers on the SPEAR system in return for a monetary reward. Chua subsequently introduced him to the unlicensed moneylender known as Ah Cheng.

Ah Cheng gave some identity card numbers to Lee, who used the system to retrieve the subscribers' personal details and was paid a total of S$200 (US162.47) for the information.

Loansharks in Singapore are known to harass borrowers, who are unable to repay their loans, at their homes.

Lee was charged with computer misuse and sentenced to six weeks in jail.

In a previous ZDNet report, security watchers noted that, despite the proliferation of new security threats such as advanced persistent threats (APTs), many companies still considered insider threats to be the biggest risk to corporate data. Rogue employees were also moving away from working solo toward collaborating with external parties.