Latvian "Robin Hood" Hacker Leaks Bank Details 170
eldavojohn writes "Move over Russell Crowe, an anonymous hacker in Latvia is being hailed as a real life modern Robin Hood. The hacker refers to himself as 'Neo,' claims allegiance with the Fourth Awakening People's Army, and is outing banks that are capitalizing off of the horrible economic status Latvia is currently suffering from. No word on how he is acquiring the information but it is slowly being leaked to TV sources via Twitter and the common people love him. The hacker is thought to be based in Britain but a TV reporter pointed out the fine line Neo is walking, 'On the one hand of course he has stolen confidential data ... and he actually has committed a crime. But at the same time there is value for the public in the sense that now a lot of information gets disclosed and the whole system maybe becomes a little more transparent.' An example of a juicy tidbit he revealed is that managers of a Latvian bank did not take the salary cuts they promised they would after the government bailed them out of economic trouble. You can imagine that taxpayers were upset and thankful they knew this information."
Latvia explained in pictures and comments (Score:5, Funny)
Million Reasons Why Latvia Is The Best Country In The World [miljons.com]
Be warned, you'll lose productivity for rest of the day.
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I suppose it would be better if I could actually read what was written in the pictures, but really, I only lost about 38 seconds of productivity. Without a sense of context, the humor in most of those was lost on me.
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I was referring more to things like this [miljons.com] and this. [miljons.com] Perhaps some of this, [miljons.com] this, [miljons.com] and this. [miljons.com] When about a third of the jokes are completely incomprehensible to me, then I'm wasting my time on the wrong website. As for the ones that I could get the joke on, I'm sure I could find something similar on failblog, where everything's written in my language.
Re:Latvia explained in pictures and comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Be warned, you'll lose productivity for rest of the day.
Sir, we are already reading slashdot.
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You can always quit, you can always start your own corporation and run it differently, you can always purchase goods/services from another corporation
And if the corporation owns the roads? Or the water supply? Or the health care system? Or the oil supply? Obviously this implies that there are multiple competitors in the same market, which 1) isn't always feasible, and 2) would require some corrective third party regulation to make sure monopolies didn't overtake the whole system, or businesses didn't collude to fix prices, or purposefully bail on their contracts with smaller organizations, etc. Chomsky in particular advocates for anarcho-syndicalism, whi
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Imagine for a moment you can produce a widget at your company...
Ahh, are we back to the Parker Brothers simplification of economics? I'm afraid you're suffering from the "widget fallacy," which assumes that for every product, that product is discrete, easily examined for quality and function, easily duplicated by competition, and doesn't affect the overall well-being of an economy. If your widget is the water supply to a city, what is the cost to the economy by the time everyone has dug their own wells, only to drain the water table to the point where none of the wells
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You're claiming I have utilized a "widget fallacy" (please provide a link because your explanation is useless to me)... Maybe you ought to give me an example of a "widget" (or "widgets") that would show the flaw in the logic.
The entire point is that very little in modern economies can be modeled by a widget, so it's a fine thought experiment, it just has one fundamental flaw: it isn't useful in reality. As thought experiments are the foundation of the Austrian school, this turns out to be a problem. In fact, it seems that the entire school of thought is that economics is too hard to model, so we should just give up, and let the market do whatever it wants. That seems like a rather pathetic solution to an important problem.
I've
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Be warned, you'll lose productivity for rest of the day.
That's nothing, compared to English Russia [englishrussia.com].
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I'm afraid there's at least one reason [youtube.com] neighbouring Estonia is better.
ahh (Score:4, Funny)
Re:ahh (Score:5, Funny)
i saw a guy walking down the street just today - in a long black coat wearing sunglasses talking on his nokia. i thought "i bet that guys a leet hacker" probably him. he was scowling.
You're wrong. The person you saw:
If this was a real hacker, he was disguised as a n00b.
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Did anyone else read this as "shushing" his server?
ssh; unzip; touch; strip; finger; expand; head; find; mount; yes; more; yes; ping; halt; make clean; sleep
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Oh, and some flying.
Some sympathy some not so (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Some sympathy some not so (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some sympathy some not so (Score:5, Funny)
How dare you openly endorse such uncivil class warfare! It is everyone's obligation to understand that bankers are simply special. It would be an insult to apply rules made for common men to them.
Don't fuck with the big banks (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know anything about Latvia. Here in the U.S., though, you don't fuck with the big banks. They have money and power--which they will throw at your political opponents [nytimes.com] if you become too much of a "problem."
From the article I just linked to:
Balanced and centrist? I guess that just about sums it up.
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Re:Don't fuck with the big banks (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see those conversations:
Bank chairmen: "Mr. Obama and Congress, give us billions of dollars of the Public's money, no strings attached."
Politicians: "If we don't do this, your banks will close, the FDIC will go bankrupt, and we will have a terrible deflationary depression, is that right?"
Bank chairmen: "You are correct. Billions of dollars, please. Hand 'em over."
Politicians: "Well we must prevent a depression, but you don't exactly deserve billions of the Public's money. So here's the cash, but there will be strings attached..."
Bank chairmen: "Whatever; thanks for the cash! PS: buy these defaulting mortgages from us too, please. At twice their real value. Good! Bye!" ... one year later ...
Politicians: "Here are the strings we told you about..."
Bank chairmen: "What? Regulation? Penalties? You radicals! We thought you were balanced centrists, not commies! After all our payouts, we still have a few billion of the Public's money left. If you try to force any penalties on us, that money will be used to make sure you never get elected again. Checkmate."
Politicians: "Oh fuck--pwned."
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What really makes me wonder is that they cannot have put things more plainly. They are not only offering their cash to have the leaders of our nation act in their personal interest (and so against the best interests of the country) but they fully expect their offer to be accepted. All that and nobody even blinks.
Truly, they should be lined up and shot as traitors, and so should anybody who accepts their offer.
Perhaps it should be televised as an example to others.
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It's the same everywhere. Here in Belgium the boards of banks are loaded with past and current politicians just to make sure they know where their bread is buttered. The only exception may be China where even top officials are afraid of the partyvan (coincidentally the only place where banks are still lending money in significant amounts because politicians told them so.)
Re:Some sympathy some not so (Score:4, Insightful)
what kind of punishment the bankers are going to get for essentially lying and stealing from the taxpayers
A bonus?
They won't stop until bankers get lynched in the streets.
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Let's see... the information that this guy is posting came from government tax documents. Meaning, pretty clearly that the government knew all about this and it is no surprise to anyone there.
Some bankers made promises that didn't come true. Boo-hoo. As far as I am aware, unless there is some sort of "contract" involved promises mean, well, nothing. No criminal act, no wrongdoing whatsoever. For example, Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay within one year. Where is his comeuppance? See, promises d
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There was no lying and no stealing from anyone. Get over it. People make lots of promises every day and they are effectively meaningless.
Seriously? You don't see telling the government that you will take pay cuts in exchange for financial assistance and then not doing it as lying? This isn't even at all like Gitmo. At least there they've been making significant efforts even though they didn't meet their goal. The bankers just flat out lied because there's no effort involved in taking a pay cut. Lying in order to get money is generally considered fraud, yes?
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It seems to me that this could be the work of a whistleblower, but then I don't see why he/she would claim to be a hacker--unless Latvia does not protect against retaliation toward whistleblowers.
Re:Some sympathy some not so (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, America doesn't protect it's whistle blowers. Why should Latvia?
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Because Latvia is part of the EU, and wants to impress it's (relatively) new friends.
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Because Latvia is part of the EU, and wants to impress it's (relatively) new friends.
Then they should legalize marijuana because all the cool countries are doing it.
Re:Some sympathy some not so (Score:4, Insightful)
If there's any indication that Neo has done anything bad (other than choosing a really pretentious and unoriginal alias) I don't see it in TFA.
Then you must not have read this sentence, found in both TFA and TFS: "On the one hand of course he has stolen confidential data... and he actually has committed a crime."
Just because some of the information in some of the stolen documents should be made public doesn't change the fact that he stole the documents. Having a good reason to commit a crime doesn't make it not a crime. It might, in some circumstances, get you leniency in sentencing, but it's still a crime.
Re:Some sympathy some not so (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some sympathy some not so (Score:5, Funny)
A "crime" is not necessarily "bad".
But a conviction still puts you behind bars.
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That's advice for all seasons, man!
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If there's any indication that Neo has done anything bad (other than choosing a really pretentious and unoriginal alias) I don't see it in TFA.
Then you must not have read this sentence, found in both TFA and TFS: "On the one hand of course he has stolen confidential data... and he actually has committed a crime."
Just because some of the information in some of the stolen documents should be made public doesn't change the fact that he stole the documents. Having a good reason to commit a crime doesn't make it not a crime. It might, in some circumstances, get you leniency in sentencing, but it's still a crime.
The fact that the crime was committed against those who were themselves engaged in criminal acts may cause the courts to consider it a justified act committed to prevent a much greater crime (i.e. the theft of large amounts of taxpayer money).
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>> the theft of large amounts of taxpayer money
I don't think that's officially a crime anywhere anymore
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The fact that the crime was committed against those who were themselves engaged in criminal acts may cause the courts to consider it a justified act committed to prevent a much greater crime (i.e. the theft of large amounts of taxpayer money).
I really hope so, but I don't have much faith in the court system anywhere after reading about what happened to the Google Executives in Italy.
Re:Some sympathy some not so (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know about Latvia, but around here vigilantism isn't looked on too kindly by most courts.
Depends on the circumstances I think. It's not like he stole the documents at gunpoint or something. This being a non-violent, non-destructive crime, I think they may be more lenient. That is, at least, if the courts aren't as corrupt as the banks.
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You must be new here. Look at how most e-crimes have worked out. What seems sensible rarely ends up occurring.
Yeah, I'm new here ;-P My thinking on this case is that they'll have to tread carefully if the public sees this guy as a hero for exposing corruption. To punish him too harshly could trigger bad things for the government. Even if the courts throw the book at him for some reason, there would likely be a lot of public pressure for a pardon.
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Of course not- the courts are bought and paid for representatives of the financial class.
Re:Some sympathy some not so (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Pentagon Papers" is the cite you're looking for (Score:2)
The People have an absolute right to know what their government is doing. There's no other way for a democracy to function. Nefarious governments always try to hide behind "state security" laws. The Heroes who blow the whistle get charged with treason.
The Textbook US example from 1971 -- The Pentagon Papers [wikipedia.org]
In brief, at the time the US Government was assuring the public we were about to get out of Vietnam, they were actually planning a massive expansion. Deep Blue Patriot Daniel Ellsburg, a RAND corporation
Sure would put the next filibuster... (Score:2)
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Having a good reason to commit a crime doesn't make it not a crime. It might, in some circumstances, get you leniency in sentencing, but it's still a crime.
Not going to disagree with you there, but willingness to commit crime can sometimes be the moral action when the law protects the immoral. There are few people that are so brave, and their actions should be lauded regardless of their criminality. One man's villain is another man's hero. Of course, the only positive thing that can be said about moral, criminal acts is that you get to be self-righteous. If you get caught, you still go to jail. On the other hand, King Richard eventually pardoned Robin Hood. Go
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The DMCA is about copyright protection and reverse engineering. It has nothing to do with hacking into information systems to obtain data.
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But breaking into computer systems was a crime before the DMCA, and will continue to be a crime even if the DMCA disappears tomorrow.
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These are trivially distinguishable, even in concept.
In the case of hacking into an external system, one is (a) making false representations to a third party (via their compu
Its the Batman defense. (Score:2)
"I can beat up anyone I want as long as I am doing it for the public good"
I am not saying Batman or this guy isn't doing good work, but he is steeping on allot of toes here. The banks are going to want to throw the book at him and the politician are going to be mad that their corruption/indifference is shown. Even if the "people" are on his side, its going to be hard to argue in a democracy he shouldn't be punished.
Also, he has to have some strong ethical guidelines here. Joker gets away with murder beca
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At least as long as banks in question are in Switzerland and stolen data can help in 'fixing' the budget deficit or so their propaganda says.
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That is a bald assertion however.
Just because someone *wrote* that he committed a crime, and someone else repeated it, does not mean it is true. I would like to see it explained exactly what crime he committed here. It appears all he did was increment and decrement urls. A system that calls that a crime would be criminally insane.
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Well do you want people poking around your accounts even if they are not giving information that will lead to identity thief.
Say for example the following...
They see a bunch of sales at a liquor store. Then they have an idea that you are a drinker/partier and give this information to your health insurance company so they can deny coverage.
Or How much porn you actually buy, say you were running for politics or put on the impression you are of strong moral values.
Or lets just say you are spending a little ext
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Whether I want it to happen or not and whether it amounts to a crime or not are two entirely different questions. As also is, if a crime was committed, who specifically committed it?
From what I can tell this guy just decremented and/or incremented URLs and the server sent him the information. If there was a crime committed, it would seem to have been commmitted by whomever had respon
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for the record, from the currently publicly available information.
1. information was obtained from a very simple and (supposedly) obvious software vulnerability;
2. software in question was developed by exigen services latvia (http://www.exigenservices.lv/ [exigenservices.lv]);
3. an audit was conducted on the local irs (vid) it systems by kmpg and ernst & young, totalling at 1 million lats (~ 2 million usd);
4. data leaked includes full wage information on majority of companies in latvia.
a lot of factors are being disputed (
Can't help myself (Score:1)
Latvia? Not USA? (Score:2)
" An example of a juicy tidbit he revealed is that managers of a Latvian bank did not take the salary cuts they promised they would after the government bailed them out of economic trouble."
Are you sure he's actually talking about Latvia and not the US?
Oh wait, AIG's execs had the balls to promise nothing and actually give themselves *bonuses* for running their company so far into the ground that it needed a bailout.
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IIRC, AIG paid bonuses to the peons of the company that performed adequately, rather than the executives themselves. But I could be mis-remembering the details. At a normal worker's level, the bonuses really do help morale extensively, especially if they weren't aware of what exactly they were doing. It's the execs' responsibility to lead the company effectively. If they were actually giving themselves bonuses, then never mind anything I just said.
I wouldn't call them "peons", that's for sure. These people had to be pretty high up. Apparently only the top 60 execs didn't get bonuses, but that only amounts to the top 0.05% percent (note that that's 5 hundredths of a percent). People under them got anywhere from tens of thousands to millions in bonuses, even those in the parts of the company where things were most disastrous. Whether there was good reason for this is debatable, but I find it difficult to believe that there were people so critical
Robin the Hood... (Score:5, Funny)
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STOP THE PRESSES! (Score:1, Troll)
Latvia has banks? :) sry.
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Every country has banks. The real news is that they have Internet ! :)
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"Neo" (Score:2)
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Angle-grinder man being supplanted? (Score:2)
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"I protect the single girl living in the big city," Terrifica told ABC in 2002. "I do this because women are weak. They are easily manipulated, and they need to be protected from themselves and most certainly from men and their ill intentions toward them."
Not that much different... (Score:1)
How about here in the states? (Score:3, Funny)
I'd like to see someone give out information on the financial businesses that received bailout funds, but rather than just hearing about executives at bankrupt companies getting paid millions in bonuses, how about we just be told their bank account numbers, routing numbers, and other personal information so we can bail ourselves out of their mess?
I find it hard to take seriously a group called... (Score:5, Funny)
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Danger (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, when you think of international conferences, most ^evil^ lobbyists use the wi-fi in the conference hotel. The presentation is boring, so 60% of them read their mails during the conference. Of course a criminal could just monitor their traffic, read their mails and grab their access passwords, then sent their mails and stuff to wikileaks. It is a danger to our national security because it is technically feasible but no one does. So the protection against criminal action is actually ethics not technology. The real danger is that Robin Hack gets famous and popular, and these pratices get spread by kiddies who enjoy to "Hack the Banksters". Or maybe the Chinese do, no idea.
Who? Wha? Huh? (Score:2)
What does Russell Crowe have to do with this again? Maybe you mean Kevin Costner?
Re:Who? Wha? Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Someone Mentioned this a Few Days Back. (Score:4, Interesting)
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It appears that whoever it was that said that has some decent predictive powers...or at least a good bit of luck every once in awhile.
Or it's the guy who leaked the data ;)
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I always liked how Woody Guthrie put it in his song about "Pretty boy" Floyd (same era...)
"Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen."
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Wait, didn't I see this in a Nintendo DS game...? (Score:2)
THE YATAGARASU STRIKES AGAIN!
If at first you don't succeed.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hacker? Not really (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hacker? Not really (Score:5, Informative)
The BBC article doesn't entirely reflect the situation. I live in Latvia and do know better ;)
The main thing they're not mentioning is the origin of that data. It wasn't just "downloaded" from the State Revenue Service via a hack or somesuch. This part has made headlines here - it turned out that the Revenue Service's internal system that contains information on all tax payers had no security, at all. You could view the confidential info by accessing an unsecured URL. And just by changing the entry id parameter in the URL, you could get to information about different tax payers, as the parent says. Any moron could get that data and apparently the "hackers"/whistleblowers in question downloaded it over the course of a couple months.
Latvia is no US and of course the organizations here don't have the same kind of security experience that organizations from big countries. Still, this is an important governmental organization we're talking about and the security hole in question is blatant and obvious. As such, many here have doubts that it was accidental, it's quite possible that the Revenue Service was sabotaged.
This Neo guy and his organization are apparently planning now to release information about the financial activities of a bunch of organizations, including governmental ones, as allegedly they believe it will help the society here, create more responsibility, etc. They have, banks aside, so far released information about the salaries of police and public transportation employees. The bank is a separate story really, it got bailed out when the recession hit hard here, and this bailout has in itself been a subject of much contention.
Not a Hack (Score:4, Informative)
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Correction to the story (Score:5, Informative)
4ATA is now periodically releasing the detailed pay information of certain public companies one at a time. He is careful to remove actual names of employees and for many this data seems trivial. But with this he is trying to prove that the claimed austerity measures undertaken by the government to fight the economic crisis is a big lie. However, the periodic release is annoying politicians who can't find a way to stop this leak.
As for Neo walking the fine line, he downloaded the data without circumventing any security measures as he claims that the website was open to everyone. The hole was one specific URL normally used by an authorized user to review his own statements. Each document in the total database is assigned an ID number and by sequentially changing the ID number in the said URL, everyone could download the whole database as no authorization was checked by the script on the server. After some time the tax department notice irregularities and noticed the developer of the system but they were rather slow to fix the breach. When they finally managed to get the act together, Neo had already downloaded about 98% of the database.
Neo?? (Score:2, Funny)
How has this not been tagged "thematrix" yet?
Too bad not Trinity (Score:2)
Cracking the IRS d-base :)
It wasn't me. (Score:2)
I didn't do it.