Hacker posts data of six million Chileans

Imagine if an American hacker were
to post the personal details of 100 million Americans - a third of the U.S. population - on the Internet. This is what happened in Chile: A hacker has posted the personal details of more than a third of Chile’s population on the Internet, including what is thought
to be information about the president’s daughter, a Chilean newspaper has
reported. Personal data, including the identity card numbers, addresses,
telephone numbers, e-mails and academic background of six million Chileans was
posted on the Internet on Friday, according to the El Mercurio newspaper. The information was posted by someone who hacked into servers at the
Ministry of Education, the electoral service and the military, according to the
paper. The security breach was first reported to police early on Saturday by an
administrator of a local technology-orientated website who discovered links to
the information online. Most of the data was promptly removed and the incident
is being investigated by police.

Speaking on local radio, the IT
administrator Leo Prieto said amongst the data he had discovered was a list of
students who receive preferential public transportation rates, including
details on what is believed to be one of President Michelle Bachelet’s two
daughters. Despite the information’s prompt removal, Prieto warned that some
people may have downloaded it “and it may still be around on the
internet.” A presidential spokesman, Francisco Vidal, called the incident
“a serious and delicate issue.” According to a police spokesman, it
is not thought that banking or financial data had been compromised.

El Mercurio reported that the hacker —
who identified himself only as an “anonymous coward” — allegedly
wanted to demonstrate a lack of security at government offices. “Benign
hacking” to expose loopholes in vulnerable systems is not uncommon. In
2006 hackers from a research team at Cardiff University’s school of computer
science alerted the bank to a security flaw in HSBC’s online banking system
which could have left more than three million customers’ accounts vulnerable to
outside attack. Hacking of government Web sites, however, is often malicious.
Last September the Financial Times reported that the Chinese military
had hacked into computers inside the Pentagon, prompting the organization to
shut down 1,500 computers, including the one used by the Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates. According to allegations by an unnamed former Pentagon official,
the Chinese cyber army would have had the power to disable the Pentagon’s
system, and re-enter it during a conflict situation, with the possibility of
causing major disruption. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, also complained
last year that German systems had been compromised by Chinese hackers and
raised her concerns with China’s premier, Hu Jintao. The
Chinese government strenuously denied all accusations.