German authorities on Tuesday said a 20-year-old hacker had confessed to stealing and leaking private data from hundreds of politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, because he was "annoyed" by some of their public statements.
The young German, who lives with his parents, was taken into custody after police searched the family home in the western state of Hesse on Sunday.
The suspect was not remanded in custody however because he was fully cooperating with the enquiry and not deemed a flight risk, said Georg Ungefuk, a spokesman for the Frankfurt prosecution service's internet crime office ZIT.
"The accused said he published the data because he had been annoyed by certain statements made by those affected," Ungefuk told a press conference in Wiesbaden.
The suspect, who because of his young age falls under juvenile law in Germany, told police he acted alone.
Ungefuk added that the young man had shown "clear remorse" about the stunning cyber security breach which affected around 1,000 German politicians, journalists and celebrities and piled political pressure on the government.
The information leaked online comprised home addresses, mobile phone numbers, letters, invoices and copies of identity documents. The data was first released via Twitter in December but its spread gathered pace last week.
Among those hit were members of the Bundestag lower house of parliament and the European Parliament as well as regional and local assemblies.
Deputies from all parties represented in the Bundestag were targeted with the exception of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the largest opposition group in parliament.
Speaking at the same press conference, the head of cyber security at Germany's Federal Police Office (BKA), Heiko Loehr, said it was too soon to say whether the suspect was acting out of far-right sympathies.
"We are still investigating his motives and whether they may have been criminal or politically motivated," he told reporters, adding that police were also working to confirm whether the suspect did indeed work alone.
Investigators have seized computers and hard drives from the scene that were now being combed over by experts, Ungefuk added.
He confirmed media reports that the suspect had tried to destroy a computer before the raid, but said investigators were still able to retrieve data from the damaged device.
- 'Attack on democracy' -
Although the leak was sweeping, there is no evidence that sensitive information reached the public, investigators and the interior ministry have said.
In the vast majority of cases, only basic contact information was made available.
The leak has nevertheless been deeply embarrassing for the political class, exposing a naive and sometimes reckless use of computer networks, and turned up the heat on the unpopular interior minister, Horst Seehofer.
Critics said the ministry and relevant authorities were slow in informing affected politicians of the leak and moving to stop it.
Seehofer is due to speak to reporters in the afternoon.
Beyond politicians, the leak also exposed the private data of celebrities and journalists, including chats and voicemail messages from spouses and children of those targeted.
The information derived both from social media and private "cloud" data.
The Twitter account @_0rbit published the links last month, along the lines of an advent calendar with each link to new information hidden behind a "door".
The account, which calls itself G0d and has now been suspended by Twitter, was opened in mid-2017 and purportedly has more than 18,000 followers.
It described its activities as "security researching", "artist" and "satire and irony" and said it was based in Hamburg.
Justice Minister Katarina Barley, who last week had labelled the data dump an attack on "our democracy and its institutions", called on internet service providers and social networks "to shut down accounts as soon as they have been hacked".
German politicians and lawmakers have repeatedly fallen victim to cyberattacks in recent years.
In 2015, the Bundestag network was hit by a malware attack later blamed on Russian hackers.
In March last year, computer networks belonging to the German government came under sustained attack and data from foreign ministry staff was stolen.
At the time, Moscow denied that Russian hackers were involved.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
BENGALURU/SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook Inc let some companies, including Netflix and Airbnb, access users' lists of friends after it cut off that data for most other apps around 2015, according to documents released on Wednesday by a British lawmaker investigating fake news and social media.
The 223 pages of internal communication from 2012 to 2015 between high-level employees, including founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, provide new evidence of previously aired contentions that Facebook has picked favorites and engaged in anti-competitive behavior.
The documents show that Facebook tracked growth of competitors and denied them access to user data available to others.
In 2014, the company identified about 100 apps as being either "Mark's friends" or "Sheryl's friends" and also tracked how many apps were spending money on Facebook ads, according to the documents, referring to Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.
The insight into the thinking of Facebook executives over that period could invite new regulatory scrutiny into its business practices.
Facebook said it stood by its deliberations and decisions, but noted that it would relax one "out-of-date" policy that restricted competitors' use of its data.
One document said such competitor apps had previously needed Zuckerberg's approval before using tools Facebook makes available to app developers.
Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Wednesday that the company could have prevented the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal had it cracked down on app developers a year earlier in 2014.
Misuse of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, along with another data breach this year and revelations about Facebook's lobbying tactics have heightened government scrutiny globally on the company's privacy and content moderation practices.
Stifel analysts on Wednesday lowered their rating on Facebook shares to "hold," saying that "political and regulatory blowback seems like it may lead to restrictions on how Facebook operates, over time."
Damian Collins, a Conservative British parliamentarian who leads a committee on media and culture, made the internal documents public after demanding them last month under threat of sanction from Six4Three.
The defunct app developer obtained them as part of its ongoing lawsuit in California state court alleging that Facebook violated promises to app developers when it ended their access to likes, photos and other data of users' friends in 2015.
Facebook, which has described the Six4Three case as baseless, said the released communications were "selectively leaked" and it defended its practices.
'WHITELISTED' FOR ACCESS TO FRIENDS DATA
Though filed under seal and redacted in the lawsuit, the internal communications needed to be made public because "they raise important questions about how Facebook treats users' data, their policies for working with app developers, and how they exercise their dominant position in the social media market," Collins said on Twitter.
Dating app Badoo and ride-hailing app Lyft were among other companies 'whitelisted' for access to data about users' friends, the documents showed.
Lyft wanted to show carpool riders their mutual friends as an "ice breaker," even if those friends were not using Lyft, according to one email. Facebook said in an email that it approved the request because it would add to a feeling of “safety” for riders.
Facebook described such deals as short-term extensions, but it is unclear exactly when the various agreements ended.
Netflix, Airbnb, Lyft and Badoo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The documents show an exchange between Zuckerberg and senior executive Justin Osofsky in 2013, in which they decided to stop giving friends' list access to Vine on the day that social media rival Twitter Inc launched the video-sharing service.
"We’ve prepared reactive PR," Osofsky wrote, to which Zuckerberg replied, "Yup, go for it."
Twitter declined to comment.
Friends' data had stoked the growth of many apps because it enabled people to easily connect with Facebook buddies on a new service.
Facebook weighed charging other apps for access to its developer tools, including the friends lists, if they did not buy a certain amount of advertising from Facebook, according to the emails. In one from 2012, Zuckerberg wrote that he was drawing inspiration for business models from books he had been reading about the banking industry.
Facebook said it ultimately maintained free access to the tools.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
