Data thief from the Netherlands: Dutch authorities are investigating possession or publication of private data, possession of phishing software and hacking tools, computer hacking and money laundering.

Victims in Austria, China, Colombia, the Netherlands, Thailand and the United Kingdom.

Prosecutors in the Netherlands have released information about an unnamed suspect who was arrested in December 2022 on charges of stealing and selling personal data of several million people. The victims are said to live in distant countries such as Austria, China, Colombia, the Netherlands, Thailand and the United Kingdom. Apparently, the courts have taken a very strict approach in this case, keeping the arrest secret from the end of 2022 until today and not releasing the suspect on bail.

The suspect is being investigated for several crimes: possession or publication of “non-public” data, possession of phishing software and hacking tools, computer hacking and money laundering. The public prosecutor's office assumes that he laundered cryptocurrencies worth almost half a million euros in 2022. We therefore assume that the court classified him as a flight risk and decided that if he was released he might be able to destroy evidence and probably thought that he might try to impress others on the cybercrime forums where he was active to warn so that they would also cover their tracks.

Austrian authorities actively involved thief

Interestingly, the investigation was triggered by the appearance of a multi-million dollar stash of Austrian citizens' personal data in a cybercrime forum. It turned out that these data sets had a common source: the company responsible for collecting radio and television license fees in Austria. Austrian police apparently went undercover to purchase a copy of the stolen data themselves, identifying (their investigation methods were not disclosed) an IP number associated with the username they were dealing with on the Dark Web . This IP number led to Amsterdam, where the Dutch police continued the investigation.

Perspective of the Dutch authorities

The team has strong indications that the suspect was operating under this username and that he had long been offering non-public or personal information - including patient data from medical records - in the forum for payment under this name. […]

By stealing large amounts of digital data, linking different databases and trading this data, more and more criminals know where a person lives, what banking transactions they do, what car they have, what their password is, what their phone numbers are, where they are works, goes to school, etc. Where previously you had to observe people for weeks to identify the right victim, today all you need to do is press a button.

The Federal Criminal Police Office in Austria writes:

Registration data stolen: C4 investigators investigate suspects in the Netherlands

After two years of investigative work, a suspect was tracked down by cybercrime investigators from the Federal Criminal Police Office and arrested in the Netherlands. He managed to obtain almost nine million Austrian registration records and offered them for sale on the Internet.

“The investigators from the Federal Criminal Police Office managed to track down an internationally wanted cyber criminal through cross-border cooperation. “I congratulate and thank all the investigators involved,” said Interior Minister Gerhard Karner on January 26, 2023. “The rapidly growing cyber crime will continue to be fought with all vehemence and new methods in the future.”

During the course of two years of highly intensive investigative work as part of SOKO HERA, investigators from the Cybercrime Competence Center (C4) at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BK) were able to identify a suspect who is held responsible for the theft of almost nine million data records from people living in Austria.

Thanks to the successful investigative work, the accused was arrested by the authorities in the Netherlands in November 2022. Surveys have shown that the accused is likely to be responsible for a large number of cybercrime cases. After investigating a telephone fraud call center in India, the investigation of this man is another success in the fight against cybercrime.

“This case shows how important and necessary investigations in cyberspace are,” emphasized Andreas Holzer, Director of the Federal Criminal Police Office. “Our investigators have the know-how and no perpetrator should be sure that they can disappear into the anonymity of the Internet.”

Stolen data offered for sale

In May 2020, an unknown person under the pseudonym “DataBox” offered the data set “Austrian Registration Data” for sale in the scene forum Raidforums.com. The content of this data package is “the full name, gender, complete address and date of birth of presumably every citizen” in Austria. There were almost nine million data records. During the same period, the hacker offered similar data sets from Italy, Colombia and the Netherlands. Shortly afterwards, the C4 experts at the Federal Criminal Police Office started investigating this data leak. Further surveys confirmed the authenticity of the data set.

As part of an international police operation against trafficking in illegal data, existing electronic traces were able to be assigned to a specific person. It was a hacker known internationally to the police. In collaboration with the Dutch security authorities, the investigation made it possible to arrest the hacker in November 2022. The Dutch police and the local judiciary are conducting investigations against the suspect. He is accused of dozens of other illegal activities on the Internet.

Also read: “Data stays online”: What are the consequences of the GIS data leak?

Sources:

Sophos
Federal Criminal Police Office
Also read: Cyber ​​attack on the German Bundestag


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