Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Hackers Blackmail Belgian Bank With Threats to Publish Customer Data

What's worse - cybercriminals breaking into your credit union's systems and stealing your members' confidential information, or being told by your attackers that you must cough up €150,000 if you don't want this member data to be published?

Image source: Bergquist
Just this week Belgian credit provider Elantis faced both. Claiming that the compromised data was unencrypted and unsafely stored, the hackers told Elantis that "while this could be called 'blackmail,' we prefer to think of it as an 'idiot tax' for leaving confidential data unprotected on a Web server."

The attack is now being investigated by the Belgian Federal High Tech Crime Unit and the outcome remains to be seen. In the meantime, lesson to be learned. There's no excuse for not properly securing and safeguarding your members' confidential data.

Are your members protected from such a breach? Read more.

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