Personal Data Of 115m Pakistanis For Sale

Leading Pakistani cyber security company Rewterz has discovered a massive data dump containing information of 115 million Pakistani mobile phone users that is now for sale on the dark web.The cyber-criminal, who is a VIP member of the dark web forum where the advertisement has been placed, has set the asking price for this data dump at 300 Bitcoins equivalent to around $2.1 million. 

Rewterz’s Threat Intelligence team has analysed some of the samples from the telecom database up for sale and the data includes personal information of the users such as names, contact numbers, residential addresses, National Identity Card numbers and Tax Code Identity Numbers. ​

With a total popultaion of 220 million, the stolen data equates to the contact information for every adult in the nation.

The firm added that the cyber-criminal offering the data dump for sale is a VIP member of the dark web forum where the ad has been posted. “Database is freshly hacked this week. That data was still being updated as I took the data down. Beautifully organised in a CSV with headers for your pleasure." the dark wed advertisement states.

Rewertz think that this data could be an outcome of multiple breaches or of a single breach of one or more mobile operators, although the given the sheer number of users suggests it is likely to be from more than one of the major service providers. 

None of the telecom operators immediately notified their customers that their data has been compromised. This could be because  the companies are unaware of the breach, the data is actually old or that they have deliberately chosen to keep their customers in the dark.

Rewertz researchers suggest that Pakistani organisations with outdated cyber security infrastructure have become an easy target of these actors and that some of the data may date from 2014.

Financially motivated threat actors are active in Pakistan and organisations with outdated cyber security infrastructure have become an easy target and if the data leak is new, it will raise serious questions on the protocols telecom companies are following regarding data security and privacy.

Rewterz:      ProPakistani:       Global Village:     TechJuice:        BusinessRecorder:

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