I haven't visited Ukraine or Russia in 10 years, but back then, you could buy USBs with all kinds of data at flea markets. Moscow would mostly have passport data, including international travelers. Odesa had addresses, job history, and so on.
This has been used countless times by OSINT investigators to out Russia's covert activities, such as Novichok poisonings of Navalny and Skripal, identifying most operatives by cross-referencing e.g. flight record, passport, property and even taxi databases sold in Russia, sometimes overtly and sometimes covertly.
Bill Browder's Red Notice[0] described using 'street sourced' data like this as their team dug into the illegal shenanigans being done against their company.
Yeah, this guy's stash may or may not include any Russian data. What I'm saying is that it's a common problem in eastern Europe, in democratic countries and authoritarian hellholes alike. Just because the Russian state can arbitrarily imprison you forever without any valid reason does not make it capable enough as an organization to securely store even data that can be used to badly hurt its interests.
The Ukrainian state has been "digitizing" by leaps and bounds even before the war, and now it's accelerated further. Everything's moving "to the cloud". They seem to be relatively competent these days, past lessons learned perhaps. But the breakneck pace of moving everything online (far outpacing most western European countries) will surely result in breaches, it's just common sense.
pretty funny that I recall walking in the "pirate shop" area in Hong Kong, and finding multi-thousand pirate copies of American shrinkwrap software, including perfect cover art and sometimes tiny manuals.
>The man was an administrator of closed groups and channels in the Telegram messenger, where he sold personal data of citizens of Ukraine and the European Union.
>Depending on the amount of data offered for sale, the man demanded from 500 to 2000 dollars.
Sounds like a small fish who downloads known leaks from the darknet and sells it on Telegram.
"Art. 362 (Unauthorized actions with information that is processed in computers, automated systems, computer networks or stored on carriers of such information, committed by a person who has the right to access it)"
If that is an accurate translation, seems like he worked for the government.
You'd be surprised how many websites (medical, financial etc) are leaking data. e.g. in many all you need is just to replace your profile id with (id+1) and get other user's data.
Especially if website owner is located in non-EU or western countries there is basically zero responsibility for this, so no one even bothers to hire a dev that understands these basic security things. The cheaper the better.
I've seen dozens of examples myself without even trying. Imagine what you can get if you spend more than 20 minutes on this.
Sure. Throughout the world, especially hospitals and healthcare seem to be particularly bad at infosec. But regarding this case, I think something like passport data is (or should be) fairly well-protected, which prompts further questions about the hypothetical breaches. Of course, it could as well be an insider case or something similar.
Another point is that Telegram was again involved.
> I think something like passport data is (or should be) fairly well-protected
It's sufficient if you're an EU citizen emigrating or traveling to another EU country. They ask you right and left for a passport, passport scan, over email, hard photocopy. You think you're "privacy conscious" and refuse to provide one? Well you're not getting an apartment, thanks bye. Hell, many HOTELS (encountered at least in Spain, Croatia, Malta) make a SCAN OF PASSPORT. Now for leaking hundreds of passport scans all you need is one bored, ill-treated, poorly paid reception worker.
>I think something like passport data is (or should be) fairly well-protected
It's astonishing how many times I've had to send scans of my passports to formations agents and banks (non-US) as email attachments in recent years. I always had on my mind how much damage could be done with a simple MX record cache poisoning.
> The Ukraine cyber police revealed that the stolen data were also bought by Russian citizens who paid using currencies prohibited in the Ukrainian territory.
This seems to state All but local currencies are prohibited. I have first hand knowledge from 2014-2016, 2020 during covid, as well as after the war, that USD and EUR is commonly used by both people and businesses. And Banks. In fact, when I wire cash every couple of months to my friends stuck there, they prefer it in dollars.
So this statement is extremely confusing because it completely contradicts reality and official bank operation there.
BTW, after the 2014 war started, I visited both Kiev and Moscow quite a bit. RUB folded 3x almost overnight after Obama's sanctions. Most well-off people and the businesses they visit, simply switched to dollars. This did not happen in Ukraine because no one had dollars. What happened instead is the many Ukranians who took out bank loans in dollars, had their lives destroyed.
Is it me or does Netishyn (the city where the guy was caught, and presumably lived) seem eerily similar to the term "netizen"? ...Or, am I thinking/seeing things on a Friday that are not really there/linked? :-)
Since your profile says “Please help me to understand!” I’ll take a swing:
You’re being downvoted because HN prefers a more substantive discussion on topics than your comment. Security, privacy, currency controls…there are any number of interesting points in this story. A “jank” network setup isn’t one of them.
Probably more importantly the tone is very Reddit-esque.
Okay? Just because people have different ideas of what is relevant doesn't mean it's worth downvoting. It's clearly relevant that someone with such a shitty setup is capable of doing such harm. It doesn't cost any money or competency to be a menace. Also comparing this site to reddit is against the rules if you read them.
