Hackers are threatening to publish a huge stolen sanctions and financial crimes watchlist
Reading Time: 2 minutesA financially motivated criminal hacking group says it has stolen a confidential database containing millions of records that companies use for screening potential customers for links to sanctions and financial crime.
The hackers, which call themselves GhostR, said they stole 5.3 million records from the World-Check screening database in March and are threatening to publish the data online.
LSEG did not name the third-party company, but did not dispute the amount of data stolen.
The data varies by record. The database contains names, passport numbers, Social Security numbers, online crypto account identifiers and bank account numbers, and more.
World-Check is currently owned by the London Stock Exchange Group following a $27 billion deal to buy financial data provider Refinitiv in 2021. LSEG collects information from public sources, including sanctions lists, government sources, and news outlets, then provides the database as a subscription to companies for conducting customer due diligence.
But privately run databases, like World-Check, are known to contain errors that can affect entirely innocent people with no nexus or connection to crime but whose information is stored in these databases.
In 2016, an older copy of the World-Check database leaked online following a security lapse at a third-party company with access to the data, including a former advisor to the U.K. government that World-Check had applied a ‘terrorism’ label to his name. Banking giant HSBC shut down bank accounts belonging to several prominent British Muslims after the World-Check database branded them with ‘terrorism’ tags.
A spokesperson for the U.K.’s data protection authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office, did not immediately comment on the breach.
To contact this reporter, get in touch on Signal and WhatsApp at +1 646-755-8849, or by email. You can also send files and documents via SecureDrop.
Ref: techcrunch
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