A sophisticated Malaysian cyber bandit hacked into the US Federal Reserve's computers, stealing nearly half a million credit and debit card numbers, US prosecutors in New York say. And I thought the US Federal Reserve is hack-proof.Lin Mun Poo, 32, was arrested on October 21 soon after entering the US and was indicted by grand jury on Thursday, the US attorney's office in Brooklyn said.
Poo, who is being held in pre-trial detention, allegedly hacked into the Cleveland, Ohio branch of the Fed, the US central bank, stole more than 400,000 card numbers, and breached the defences of other systems.
The US attorney's office said Poo "made a career of compromising computer servers belonging to financial institutions, defence contractors, and major corporations, among others, and selling or trading the information."
The 32-year-old was arrested by the US Secret Service a few hours after flying into John F Kennedy International Airport in New York.
He was caught by Secret Service agents while selling stolen credit card numbers for US$1,000 (RM3,120) at a restaurant in New York city.
"Secret Service agents seized his heavily encrypted laptop computer, which contained a massive quantity of financial account data and personal identifying information that he had allegedly obtained by hacking," the prosecutor's office said.
Brian Parr, the head of the Secret Service's New York office, said cyber crimes "not only affect our nation's financial infrastructure, but are also an ongoing threat to our national security."
Among the other alleged hacking by Poo, the Secret Service said he entered a Pentagon contractor's system "potentially compromising highly sensitive military logistics information."
Via: bigpondnews.com