This article is more than 1 year old

Qatari hack: Bank 'investigating' leak

Dossier-building third party probably dumped the data

After yesterday's allegations of a file leak, the Qatar National Bank has issued a neither-confirm-nor-deny statement about the data dump.

As El Reg reported yesterday, a zipfile first posted appeared, disappeared re-appeared on Cryptome.org, leaving claims it contains personal data of the bank's customers in its wake.

The bank's statement says it's not going to “comment on reports circulated via social media”, but assures customers it's “further investigating this matter in coordination with all concerned parties”.

The Register suspects that means the bank's trying to work out how its customer data ended up in the dossiers.

Doha News reports that the leaked files (the 500 MB-plus zipfile is still online at Cryptome) mostly recorded details of Al Jazeera staff.

However, other folders in the dump include information purporting to be about members of the Qatari royal family, the police, government employees, defence and police, “spies”, and Qatar's intelligence service, Mukhabarat.

Al Jazeera staff have told Doha News the information about them appears to be correct.

Data about individuals includes account details and passwords, links to their social media profiles, and transaction records.

Given the extent of non-bank information reportedly in the drop, it's likely that the data was being compiled by a third party adding the banking information to dossiers of targets. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like