Two “Mosos d'esquadra”, in an archive image.CARLES RIBAS
The hacker, who managed to access at least two Mossos d'Esquadra corporate accounts and disseminate personal information of 148 agents, also accessed TV-3 data. The person under investigation entered a public FTP of the Catalan Audiovisual Media Company, where files containing promotions and previews of some of its programs are shared, and shared the keys through social networks. “There was no attack [informático] against the CCMA,” explains the public body, limiting the incident to the violation of “some users and passwords,” which changed as soon as they were alerted by the regional police.
On January 15, Mossos leadership activated the Risk and Protection Assessment Commission after learning that one of its corporate mailboxes, which had been compromised by various individuals, had been compromised. The agents' main hypothesis is that a hacker accessed and obtained sensitive data of around seventy police officers, including their telephone number and professional number, as well as full name emails, due to a weak password. The next day, they discovered that there had been a second sharing of personal data, affecting a total of 148 police officers. The pirate claims on social networks that he has connections to around 300 agents, without the Catalan police knowing that there are new victims.
Since then, the hacker has been posting previews of supposedly stolen material in various campaigns. In addition to the police's personal information, it has also disseminated information about at least four citizens who appear in police documents: a robbery with violence investigation, a European warrant arrest and a prison transfer. Likewise, the pirate has stated that he is preparing a leak of “data of Barcelona citizens”, giving examples including addresses and banking details that he offers in exchange for money or cryptocurrencies, without, however, specifying where he came from. The information was stolen. He also made public the payslips allegedly stolen from several people.
The Catalan police have launched an investigation to arrest the perpetrator or perpetrators of the data theft and data sharing. “At the moment we have not established that he has sold data, he is offering it for free,” police sources say about the hacker’s actions. On his social networks, the pirate also boasts of other breaches using compromised passwords, including those affecting the Ministry of Security in Buenos Aires or that of Tucumán in Argentina.
The leadership of Mossos d'Esquadra has offered the affected police officers forms of self-protection in light of the leak, including the possibility of changing their Personal Identification Card (TIP) number. Likewise, from the time of the attack, they blocked and changed the passwords of 3,000 non-nominal accounts, like the two affected. All units involved in the investigation took part in briefings on the possible impact of the attack and provided safety advice. They have also informed the Data Protection Authority of the leak and coordinated with the Catalan Cybersecurity Authority.
“Since the first leak, they have hit us urgently,” explains the spokeswoman for the SAP-UGT union, Imma Viudes, recognizing the speed of reaction of the Catalan police headquarters, which had once contacted those affected directly, called all the unions. “The incident is still under investigation. Once we know for sure, we will assess whether something has gone wrong, adds Viudes, pointing out some elements that could be reconsidered, such as whether it is necessary for work plans like the leaked ones to contain certain personal data. “All of this needs to be investigated,” he points out.
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The Catalan police suffered the largest loss of personal police data almost eight years ago, when hackers accessed the servers of one of the police unions, SME, spread the identities of more than 5,400 police officers and posed as members of the union on Twitter. Then, under the pseudonym of a popular and idolized hacker, Phineas Fisher, the action was claimed as a form of protest against cases of police errors. After a long legal process, the court in Barcelona provisionally closed the case against the two main defendants in November last year due to a lack of evidence.
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