A group of hackers, calling themselves “Anonymous Ukrain”, claim to have in their possession the details of 800 million stolen credit and debit cards.
To prove their claims, the hackers uploaded part of the data to file-sharing websites and published links on Pastebin, which point to the compromised data.
The files are 300MB in size and contain information for 7 million MasterCard, Visa, Discover and American Express cards. Some researchers claim that the data comes in part from the attacks on the American company Target - American politicians blame hackers from Ukraine for penetrating the computers of the retail chain and stealing the details of 40 million payment cards.
However, the true identity of the hackers remains in question. According to security researchers at Massive PR, the hacking group behind the data leak is using the name Anonymous Ukraine, but in reality it is an entirely different group.
Anonymous Ukraine uses some standard social media accounts to promote their activities: @UkraineAnon on Twitter, Anon.Ukraine on Facebook, and Ukrhack on vk.com. These profiles have been used for some time, drawing attention to the unrest in Crimea, and the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
However, none of these accounts have reported the credit card data leak, which was announced via the @Op_Ukraine account. The Twitter profile, which has been active for three days, has posted messages exclusively about the data leak.
“We believe someone is trying to use the Anonymous Ukrain name,” said Zimmatore El Reg of Massive PR. “[The leak] was not announced by the official Anonymous social media accounts, which usually proudly announce such achievements.”.
"However, we have noticed that the data leak is being discussed almost exclusively on the Russian forum," the researcher noted, hinting that Russian hackers may be behind "Anonymous Ukrain.".
