For almost a dozen years, residents of South Carolina have been stored at the hours of darkness by state and federal investigators over who was answerable for hacking into the state’s income division in 2012 and stealing tax and checking account data for 3.6 million folks. The reply might not be a thriller: KrebsOnSecurity discovered compelling clues suggesting the intrusion was carried out by the identical Russian hacking crew that stole of tens of millions of cost card information from huge field retailers like Residence Depot and Goal within the years that adopted.
Questions on who stole tax and monetary knowledge on roughly three quarters of all South Carolina residents got here to the fore final week on the affirmation listening to of Mark Keel, who was appointed in 2011 by Gov. Nikki Haley to move the state’s legislation enforcement division. If authorized, this is able to be Keel’s third six-year time period in that position.
The Related Press reports that Keel was cautious to not launch many particulars in regards to the breach at his listening to, telling lawmakers he is aware of who did it however that he wasn’t prepared to call anybody.
“I believe the truth that we didn’t provide you with a complete lot of individuals’s data that bought breached is a testomony to the work that individuals have completed on this case,” Keel asserted.
A ten-year retrospective printed in 2022 by The Publish and Courier in Columbia, S.C. stated investigators decided the breach started on Aug. 13, 2012, after a state IT contractor clicked a malicious hyperlink in an e-mail. State officers stated they came upon in regards to the hack from federal legislation enforcement on October 10, 2012.
KrebsOnSecurity examined posts throughout dozens of cybercrime boards round that point, and located just one occasion of somebody promoting giant volumes of tax knowledge within the 12 months surrounding the breach date.
On Oct. 7, 2012 — three days earlier than South Carolina officers say they first discovered of the intrusion — a infamous cybercriminal who goes by the deal with “Rescator” marketed the sale of “a database of the tax division of one of many states.”
“Checking account data, SSN and all different data,” Rescator’s gross sales thread on the Russian-language crime discussion board Embargo learn. “If you are going to buy your entire database, I will provide you with entry to it.”
Every week later, Rescator posted the same supply on the unique Russian discussion board Mazafaka, saying he was promoting data from a U.S. state tax database, with out naming the state. Rescator stated the information uncovered included Social Safety Quantity (SSN), employer, identify, deal with, telephone, taxable earnings, tax refund quantity, and checking account quantity.
“There may be a whole lot of data, I’m able to promote your entire database, with entry to the database, and in components,” Rescator instructed Mazafaka members. “There may be additionally data on company taxpayers.”
On Oct. 26, 2012, the state introduced the breach publicly. State officers stated they had been working with investigators from the U.S. Secret Service and digital forensics specialists from Mandiant, which produced an incident report (PDF) that was later printed by South Carolina Dept. of Income. KrebsOnSecurity sought remark from the Secret Service, South Carolina prosecutors, and Mr. Keel’s workplace. This story will likely be up to date if any of them reply. Replace: The Secret Service declined to remark.
On Nov. 18, 2012, Rescator instructed fellow denizens of the discussion board Verified he was promoting a database of 65,000 information with checking account data from a number of smaller, regional monetary establishments. Rescator’s gross sales thread on Verified listed greater than a dozen database fields, together with account quantity, identify, deal with, telephone, tax ID, date of start, employer and occupation.
Requested to offer extra context in regards to the database on the market, Rescator instructed discussion board members the database included monetary information associated to tax filings of a U.S. state. Rescator added that there was a second database of round 80,000 companies that included social safety numbers, names and addresses, however no monetary data.
The AP says South Carolina paid $12 million to Experian for id theft safety and credit score monitoring for its residents after the breach.
“On the time, it was one of many largest breaches in U.S. historical past however has since been surpassed drastically by hacks to Equifax, Yahoo, Residence Depot, Goal and PlayStation,” the AP’s Jeffrey Collins wrote.
Because it occurs, Rescator’s legal hacking crew was immediately answerable for the 2013 breach at Target and the 2014 hack of Home Depot. The Goal intrusion noticed Rescator’s cybercrime outlets promoting roughly 40 million stolen cost playing cards, and 56 million playing cards from Residence Depot prospects.
Who’s Rescator? On Dec. 14, 2023, KrebsOnSecurity printed the outcomes of a 10-year investigation into the identity of Rescator, a.okay.a. Mikhail Borisovich Shefel, a 36-year-old who lives in Moscow and who lately modified his final identify to Lenin.
Mr. Keel’s assertion that someway the efforts of South Carolina officers following the breach might have lessened its impression on residents appears unlikely. The stolen tax and monetary knowledge seems to have been bought brazenly on cybercrime boards by one of many Russian underground’s most aggressive and profitable hacking crews.
Whereas there are not any indications from reviewing discussion board posts that Rescator ever bought the information, his gross sales threads got here at a time when the incidence of tax refund fraud was skyrocketing.
Tax-related id theft happens when somebody makes use of a stolen id and SSN to file a tax return in that individual’s identify claiming a fraudulent refund. Victims often first study of the crime after having their returns rejected as a result of scammers beat them to it. Even those that usually are not required to file a return will be victims of refund fraud, as can those that usually are not really owed a refund from the U.S. Inside Income Service (IRS).
In keeping with a 2013 report from the Treasury Inspector Normal’s workplace, the IRS issued almost $4 billion in bogus tax refunds in 2012, and greater than $5.8 billion in 2013. The cash largely was despatched to individuals who stole SSNs and different data on U.S. residents, after which filed fraudulent tax returns on these people claiming a big refund however at a special deal with.
It stays unclear why Shefel has by no means been formally implicated within the breaches at Goal, Residence Depot, or in South Carolina. It might be that Shefel has been indicted, and that these indictments stay sealed for some cause. Maybe prosecutors had been hoping Shefel would determine to go away Russia, at which level it might be simpler to apprehend him if he believed nobody was on the lookout for him.
However all indicators are that Shefel is deeply rooted in Russia, and has no plans to go away. In January 2024, authorities in Australia, the USA and the U.Ok. levied monetary sanctions towards 33-year-old Russian man Aleksandr Ermakov for allegedly stealing knowledge on 10 million prospects of the Australian medical insurance large Medibank.
Every week after these sanctions had been put in place, KrebsOnSecurity printed a deep dive on Ermakov, which discovered that he co-ran a Moscow-based IT safety consulting enterprise together with Mikhail Shefel known as Shtazi-IT.
A Google-translated model of Shtazi dot ru. Picture: Archive.org.
