Brazil Reacts to UOL Hack

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,22287,00.html

By Daniel Helft
February 16, 2001, 9:18 AM PST

Brazilian police are investigating an online attack on the country's
largest Internet service provider, UOL, in which hackers succeeded in
stealing credit-card numbers from over 10,000 users.

According to Brazilian press reports, one of the suspects to be
arrested was the son of a Brazilian congressman.

"This was one of the biggest coups on the Brazilian Internet that we
know of and that we can explain," Renato Funicello, police director of
information technology, was quoted as saying on the UOL Web site.

E-mail sent last September asked 10,241 UOL subscribers to re-enter
their personal information, including credit-card numbers and
expiration dates, on a fake UOL site.

According to the UOL report, police found that the information
gathered there went to two U.S. Internet service providers and one in
Brazil's capital city, Brasilia.

A month ago, police confiscated the computer of a member of congress,
according to the Reuters newswire. Police have not released the
congressman's name or that of his son, who is said to be one of the
main suspects.

UOL says that only one credit card was used illegally, and that the
cardholder has already been reimbursed. The company says that it kept
this news secret until now in order to facilitate the work of
investigators.

"As soon as we detected the fraud, UOL blocked access to the site used
for the crime," said UOL in a statement.

UOL is Latin America's largest ISP, and has over a million paying
subscribers. It is owned by Brazil's leading daily newspaper, Folha,
and media behemoth Abril.

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