Hacker Leaks Customer Data After a United Arab Emirates Bank Fails to Pay Ransom
A hacker who broke into a large bank in the United Arab Emirates made good on his threat to release customer data after the bank refused to pay a bitcoin ransom worth about $3 million.
The hacker, who calls himself Hacker Buba, breached the network of a bank in Sharjah last month reportedly identified as Invest Bank, and began releasing customer account and transaction records via Twitter.
Although extortion hacks using ransomware are a growing trend, it doesn’t appear that the hacker in this case used ransomware. Ransomware involves malware installed on a victim’s machine that encrypts their data or otherwise locks them out of their system until they pay a ransom, usually in Bitcoin. In this case, it appears the bank still had access to its systems, and the hacker merely siphoned the data.
