"Dutch Hacker Steals Data From Virtually Entire Population of Austria"

A Dutch hacker allegedly stole data on 9 million Austrian citizens via a misconfigured cloud database, thus leading to their recent arrest. The attack was first detected in May 2020 and involved the Fees Info Service (GIS), which is responsible for collecting TV and radio license fees in Austria. According to Austria's Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt/BK), the GIS had hired an Information Technology (IT) company based in Vienna to work on its internal databases. The databases contained information about citizens' locations, which could be used to find anyone attempting to avoid paying a broadcast fee. One of the IT company's employees used GIS data during a test and left a database accessible online without protecting it. According to investigators, the hacker discovered the data via a search engine. The data is suspected of having impacted nearly all Austrian citizens, as the country has a population of approximately 9.1 million people. Names, dates of birth, and registration addresses were among the exposed data. This article continues to discuss the theft of data from a misconfigured cloud database that has impacted almost the entire Austrian population.

ITPro reports "Dutch Hacker Steals Data From Virtually Entire Population of Austria"