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Hacker steals information on 6 million Chileans
(EFE Ingles Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Santiago, May 11 (EFE).- Personal data on some 6 million Chileans were accessed on the Internet by a hacker who stole files from the Web pages of several public service companies, police said Sunday.
The names of people along with their identity numbers, addresses, business and home telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and educational and social information turned up on the Internet on Saturday.
The information was obtained by the hacker from the General National Mobilization Directory, the Election Service, the Education Ministry, the Web site for the University Selection Test, or PSU, and telephone directories.
The data appeared first on FayerWayer, a Chilean blog dedicated to technological subjects, which received the material on one of its forums and whose managers immediately informed the police, whose Cybercrimes Brigade began investigating the matter.
"If true, it would be a serious matter. Therefore, the veracity of the information is being investigated," precinct chief Jaime Jara told the daily El Mercurio, which reported the incident in its Sunday edition.
Later, the information was also published by the Web page elantro.cl, where a user posted the links to the page where the archives were stored and whose administrators also began erasing the data.
At the La Moneda presidential palace, administration spokesman Francisco Vidal said that the case was "serious and delicate," and he admitted that the government will have to improve the data protection measures at public entities.
"It's a delicate thing. We're talking about six million files," he told reporters, adding that "the hacker must be caught."
"What the government needs to do, if it hasn't been done already, is file a complaint with the Public Ministry, because this is a crime," he said.
The still unidentified hacker also included a file in which he explained that his aim was to demonstrate how "badly protected data are in Chile," and the person added that since nobody was troubling to protect the information he/she decided to make it public.
The publication includes lists of Education Ministry files, the names and other information on people who sign up for the PSU and a list of the telephone numbers corresponding to private and business phone numbers in Santiago, El Mercurio reported.
The hacker also said that the data could be used to create a virtual map with Google Earth or Google Maps, where one could determine precisely where each person listed lives.
The hacker added that with the school admission files, and using the data on the BIP public transport electronic payment cards, one could gain access to students' daily movements.
Jose Ignacio Stark, one of the administrators of the www.fayerwayer.com blog, said that the case was very serious, adding that internal reviews must be conducted at the public entities that were hacked into.
Another FayerWayer executive, Leo Prieto, said that no leak of this kind had ever occurred before in Chile.
"It's not the same thing to publish a link to download a movie ... than to publish a database with private information on six million Chileans. On this scale, it's the first time this has happened. Something like this has never happened here," Prieto told the Cooperativa radio station. EFE
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Copyright ? 2008 EFE News Services (U.S.) Inc.
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