Hacker attack on Revolut: Italian police data in criminals' hands, $3 million ransom demanded
The group 'I Am Not A Villain' claims to have stolen 147 GB of data from Revolut, including internal documents from Italian law enforcement. A ransom of 3 million dollars has been demanded within 24 hours.
Hackers claim to have stolen Italian police data from Revolut: investigation opened in Reggio Calabria
Among the data stolen from British digital bank Revolut could be confidential documents from Italian law enforcement. This is claimed by the hacker group known as 'I Am Not A Villain', which contacted the Financial Times via Telegram, stating that it had conducted an operation lasting several months, through which it would have acquired 147 gigabytes of sensitive material, including internal documents and chats of officers. According to ansa.it, the authorities are now carrying out checks to verify the authenticity of the claim.
The extortion and method of deception
The group, which would have stolen data relating to 680 international Revolut clients, has asked the company to pay a ransom of 3 million dollars within 24 hours, threatening otherwise to sell the information to other criminal organisations. Investigators are monitoring the dark web to detect any potential sale of the stolen material.
In messages exchanged with the City newspaper, the hackers stated that they had posed as "a body of Italian law enforcement" and that Revolut had "cooperated like a good boy". In support of their claim, the group shared screenshots of emails exchanged with the bank.
The investigation by the Reggio Calabria public prosecutor's office
The public prosecutor's office of Reggio Calabria has opened an investigation into the matter. A preliminary report from the postal police on unauthorised access to the certified email of the local prefectura has been submitted to the magistrates' desk. The suspected crime is intrusion into a computer system of public interest.
Investigators have not yet established with certainty whether a computer at the Prefectura of Reggio Calabria or the Viminale was compromised, but believe it to be an operation of high sophistication. Technical experts are verifying whether the institutional email was violated directly or cloned. In any case, the criminals would have managed to obtain sensitive data — passports, identity cards, bank accounts, Bitcoin transactions — of several hundred customers, making requests signed 'postal police' from an institutional .it domain over six months, before raising suspicions.
The National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office has also turned its attention to the matter, as is customary when a breach involves a government agency.
The response from the Privacy Authority and Revolut
The Privacy Authority has launched an immediate verification of any security flaws in the access systems of Italian banking institutions, to establish the possible presence of other cases of attempted infiltration and to call on banks to conduct stricter internal controls. From the Authority's offices, a communication was sent to the data protection officers of banking institutions, inviting them to conduct a "diligent verification" of their systems and to contact the Authority immediately in case of irregularities.
The Authority has also engaged with the corresponding Lithuanian authority — where Revolut is registered — for an exchange of information and coordinated counter-action. Similar contact has been established with the Interior Ministry to more fully reconstruct the matter and verify the involvement of other financial institutions.
Revolut meanwhile has reassured its customers, confirming that "Revolut's systems and customer funds have not been touched".
Source: Google News IT — Crime (it)