Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

American Man Jailed in US Over Singapore HIV Data Leak

An American man who leaked confidential details of thousands of HIV-positive people in Singapore, most of them foreigners, has been jailed in the United States for two years.

An American man who leaked confidential details of thousands of HIV-positive people in Singapore, most of them foreigners, has been jailed in the United States for two years.

Mikhy Farrera Brochez was convicted by a Kentucky court in June for trying to extort the Singapore government using the stolen data.

The 34-year-old had obtained the data from his partner, a senior Singaporean doctor who also helped Brochez conceal his HIV-positive status to get a work permit for the city-state.

Confidential information including the names and addresses of 14,200 people diagnosed with the virus that causes AIDS was dumped online.

The leak caused anxiety among those with HIV, who have long complained of facing prejudice in socially conservative Singapore.

Brochez was sentenced to 24 months in federal prison on Friday, said a statement from the US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Kentucky.

“The defendant’s conduct was serious and significant, affecting thousands of people across the world,” said US Attorney Robert M. Duncan Jr.

The data included information on more than 50 American citizens, the statement said.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Brochez will also be placed under supervision for three years after his release.

He was jailed in Singapore in 2016 for lying about his HIV status, drug-related offences and fraud.

He was deported in 2018 and then news emerged of the data leak, prompting his arrest in the US.

Trial testimony showed that Brochez emailed the data to his mother in Kentucky and retrieved the information upon his return.

Foreigners with HIV were for many years not allowed to set foot in Singapore at all.

In 2015, authorities began allowing foreigners with the virus to make short visits, but those seeking to work in Singapore must still pass a HIV test.

The data leak was the second major breach of confidential information disclosed within months, after the health records of about 1.5 million Singaporeans were stolen by hackers last year.

Written By

AFP 2023

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Data Protection

The cryptopocalypse is the point at which quantum computing becomes powerful enough to use Shor’s algorithm to crack PKI encryption.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Artificial Intelligence

The CRYSTALS-Kyber public-key encryption and key encapsulation mechanism recommended by NIST for post-quantum cryptography has been broken using AI combined with side channel attacks.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.