The data of the entire population of Austria sold on the darknet
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The Dutch cybercriminal responsible for this attack was arrested in November 2022
On 25 January 2023, Dutch police announced that they had arrested a Dutch cybercriminal. The 25-year-old man allegedly stole the personal data of 9 million Austrians, almost the entire population of the country, in May 2020.
The stolen information included their full name, gender, date of birth and address. The cybercriminal then allegedly put them up for sale on a darknet forum. Austrian police state they can irrevocably assume that all or some of this data is in criminal hands.
The hacker was arrested in an apartment in Amsterdam in November 2022. Austrian police said that the suspect was already known to international police and was now the subject of an investigation by the Dutch police and judicial authorities.
The delay in announcing this arrest was intended to avoid impeding the ongoing investigation. According to Dutch authorities, the cybercriminal is also suspected of selling similar sets of data from Italy, the Netherlands and Columbia.