Hackers are demanding a $3 million ransom from the British fintech giant Revolut after siphoning data from it through fake government requests for five months.
Last week, the company notified potentially affected users that their personal information, passports, email addresses, phone numbers, and financial information were compromised in the data breach.
To obtain the information, the hackers posed as an official government agency. Because Revolut is required to respond to legal requests from law enforcement, it complied.
The company refrained from sharing the name of the impersonated government agency or the number of impacted individuals when contacted by SecurityWeek.
On Wednesday, a threat actor using the moniker ‘IAmNotAVillain’ publicly demanded $3 million from Revolut, threatening to sell the customer information allegedly obtained from the company.
However, it appears that the alleged hacker has not contacted the fintech giant directly to present their demands.
“Revolut has not received any direct contact or demand from the individuals or group making these claims,” a Revolut spokesperson said, responding to a SecurityWeek inquiry.
IAmNotAVillain also said publicly that a sample of the exfiltrated information was in the hands of a former associate who also claimed responsibility for the data breach.
680 Revolut customers, 147GB of police data
The Duel investigations team has established contact with the threat actor and learned that Revolut responded to the fake government requests for roughly five months, Hudson Rock reports.
The campaign started after the hacker compromised a government employee’s accounts via an infostealer infection and started using the email account to send fraudulent government requests to Revolut Bank UAB, the Lithuania-based subsidiary of the British firm.
According to the hacker, Revolut Bank UAB responded to their requests without questioning their legitimacy.
SecurityWeek understands that the personal and financial information of approximately 680 Revolut customers, reportedly cryptocurrency whales, was compromised.
In separate communications, the hackers claimed that their campaign lasted for six months and that it also involved the theft of over 147GB of data from a law enforcement agency in Italy. The Italian police have launched an investigation into the matter.
The compromised email address on pec.interno.it appears to belong to an employee within the Italian Ministry of the Interior. Hudson Rock says it is aware of more than 300 compromised credentials associated with pec.interno.it.
“Based on this intelligence, we assess that it is highly unlikely the hacker actively infected these specific employees themselves. Instead, they likely purchased or utilized existing Infostealer logs containing these credentials, attempting to obfuscate their true method of initial access,” the cybersecurity firm notes.
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