14 DAY TRIAL // Lately, there was news about hackers stealing data, that it became something sort of common. How many were affected this time? Well, about 60.000 people, which is nowhere close to what Prg has done to Monster.com. So, the good news is that it could have been worse.
It all happened in Norway, when a group of hackers had made their way into the backbone of Tele2's website. This is a Nordic telecommunications company with more than 30 million customers in 22 countries. According to itProPortal, a flaw in the website allowed hackers to access 1.3 percent of the national personal ID numbers and addresses of subscribers.
As a report from the Sydney Morning Herald shows us, sites that try to be ever simpler to use may become more vulnerable to hackers. Agency official, Gunnel Helmer, said in the same report that the hope that this time someone just wanted to highlight the ease with which identities can be stolen on the Internet.
The Police is currently on the matter, while Tele2 has been issued to strengthen their security systems, so that something like this may never happen again. The people whose data had been stolen could have their addresses changed by the hackers and so have their mail diverted to third-party addresses and they could also be affected by more annoying facts as well.
What comes to me as rather ironic thing is the fact the very head of Norway's data protection agency, George Apenes, has been affected by this situation. One day he received a new SIM (subscriber identity module) for his mobile phone, the really odd part being that it came from a company he had not subscribed to.
If in some cases, personal data is stolen through phishing the people that were affected by this, really couldn't do nothing about it, since it all happened because of a weakness the site had. So, the matter is in the hands of the Police now, and I guess there's not much the concerned people can do.