Due to a “stupid mistake”, the registration addresses of all Austrians – from the Federal President down – ended up on the Internet. A Dutchman turned the treasure trove of data into money.
In the middle of the corona pandemic, it was early June 2020, an alleged hacker attack on the ORF fee collector made headlines. At the time, data was said to have been stolen from the GIS on a large scale, the trail initially led to Serbia. Today it is clear: due to sloppiness, the registration data of all Austrians – including high-ranking politicians and celebrities – ended up on the Internet for almost a week. At the time, GIS commissioned a well-known IT company to put their database on a new footing. The faux pas is likely to have happened to an employee, the Austrian population register went practically online. The registration addresses of all people who live in Austria were unprotected online for almost a week “DataBox” hidden, easy game. He siphoned off the data and tried to sell it (see excerpt above). And he actually found a buyer – namely an investigator from the Federal Criminal Police Office who had already gotten his teeth into the case. The district inspector – he wishes to remain anonymous – finally bought the data set for a few thousand euros and also received the promise from the hacker that who would no longer offer the data for sale. Although this initially averted the risk of further spread, the real work for the cyber cop only started now. Namely the hunt for the data thief in the real world. The Cyber Crime Competence Center – C4 for short – was founded in 2011 as a reaction to increasing cybercrime and is based in the Federal Criminal Police Office (BK). 90 people currently work in the C4, the team consists of two-thirds detectives and one-third civilian experts. By the end of 2024, the number of employees is to be increased to 130. The current case is the most far-reaching that the C4 has ever been able to solve. FBI also involvedThe trail led as far as New Zealand, then via Germany to the Netherlands. In the course of the investigation, which dragged on for more than two years, various police authorities appeared, including the US FBI. Recently, the handcuffs clicked for a 25-year-old Dutchman with Turkish roots. He is considered an international leader in the hacker scene and is said to have siphoned off no less than 130,000 (!) data records worldwide and turned them into money. Unlike in Austria, the suspect faces a long prison sentence.
source site-12