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A hacker named Buba dumped customer details obtained from a United Arab Emirates bank after the bank refused to pay a $3 million bitcoin ransom. The hacker has also contacted some of the bank's customers individually:
A hacker who broke into a large bank in the United Arab Emirates made good on his threat to release customer data after the bank refused to pay a bitcoin ransom worth about $3 million. The hacker, who calls himself Hacker Buba, breached the network of a bank in Sharjah last month identified as Invest Bank by The Daily Dot, and began releasing customer account and transaction records via Twitter.
[...] The news was first reported by the Dubai-based newspaper Xpress . According to the journalist, the hacker offered to give him 5 percent of the paid ransom for his cooperation, though it's unclear what kind of cooperation he was seeking from the reporter. He reportedly told the journalist that he had data from other banks as well. "I give u 5 % from total I get. Have many banks from UAE, Qater, ksa and etc. Will work together," he reportedly wrote in a direct message to the reporter via Twitter.
The hacker reportedly used the picture of an Invest Bank employee for his Twitter avatar to post the account statements of government officials and UAE firms on November 18. Although Twitter closed the account, the hacker opened a new one and released the account statements of some 500 bank customers.
He also sent text messages and emails to bank customers, using contact details gleaned from their bank account records, and threatening to release their records online unless they or the bank paid him a ransom.
More at SC Magazine and The Register.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday December 09 2015, @12:45PM
This is really bad, and Buba is a criminal and an extortionist and a complete jizzbottle who deserves to face justice. Yet somehow I am completely failing to work up any outrage whatsoever. Could it be that the banks are even bigger jizzbottles and crooks? Feel bad for the customers affected, but it doesn't look like Buba is targeting them directly, and with a bit of luck they'll get any losses refunded by the banks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @12:54PM
Yet somehow I am completely failing to work up any outrage whatsoever.
That's because you're in cahoots! In cahoots I say!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @01:03PM
or maybe Buba wants this money for Daesh, and ... I don't see how the banks could be bigger jizzbottles and crooks in that case.
I do agree that the banks should be punished for not protecting this information, and exposing their customers to extortion, but you'll always go wrong if you side with the bank robber.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @01:48PM
> Feel bad for the customers affected, but it doesn't look like Buba is targeting them directly, and with a bit of luck they'll get any losses refunded by the banks.
Other than trying to extort the customers to keep their account statements unreleased, it doesn't sound like anyone is trying to steal from the customers.
The biggest risk for customers here is revealing evidence of criminal activity by the bank's customers and Buba seems to understand that since he released the statements of government officials and corporations. I'm sure he's motivated by greed rather than civic duty. But that's really independent of the results.
However, anyone with evidence of criminal activity may well decide to pay the ransom to keep their account statements from being released. If Buba is really civic minded, he'll hold back the info on the customers that do pay the ransom and then release that info in a special "give these account records extra scrutiny" data dump.
Is that another variation on "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about?" Maybe. But I'm more tolerant of that reasoning when applied to the powerful rather than the peons.