Daily Post 1335
THE DATA BAZAAR!
While the tonnes of data locked in enterprise severs remain un-utilised for any value add, planning or business solutions, the hackers are out in the open, in lockdown relaxation, hitting the world at a totally different pace. The one in news is Truecaller, which all of us use for getting the name of the unknown caller. A real good utility indeed. But hackers would change the way we look at different softwares or apps depending what they end up doing with their databases.
One cyber criminal has put up for sale 4.75 crores Indians Truecaller records for a paltry sum of USD 1,000. The data pertains to the year 2019. The online intelligence firm was also pretty surprised with the pricing of this bounty. The Truecaller spokesperson said that it is compiled database which was given the company’s name, so as to make it look credible. Difficult to comment on it’s authenticity as of now. The personal data leaked leads to increase in various nefarious activities such as identity thefts, scams and corporate espionage. The same researcher company Cyble detected personal data of 2.9 crores Indians being sold on the dark web which was sourced from Indian job websites.
From the caller utilities data to Bitcoin is the spectrum of the Data Bazar today. They seem to have taken over the world. Totally unnerved by COVID-19, they are on a roll. A hacker who was behind the cyber attack on Ethereum.org is now selling data tied to the key crypto currency wallets like Keepkey, Trezor, Ledger and online investment platform Bnktothefuture. The hacker is in possession of three databases pertaining to at least 80,000 customers. Ledger, however, tweeted: “Rumours pretend our Shopify database has been hacked through a Shopify exploit.” With the Shopify spokesperson stating that there is no evidence to substantiate the same, only an investigation, if conducted, would tell us the true story. Generally, this does not happen.
We live in a world where data it the biggest asset, it’s the new oil. Unlike oil, flow is unknown. The backdoors to revolving doors to data brokers to enterprises and governments are all feeding on data. Even the European Union’s General Protection Regulation, GDPR, could not make the impact, it was intended to. The laws seems to have succumbed to the hackers, brokers and even IT behemoths. The user seems to have become a bystander, when he is being traded upon. These are citizens of the hapless democracies across the globe.
IF DATA REMAINS UNPROTECTED, THERE IS NO PURPOSE IN PROTECTING ANYTHING ELSE. WORLD IS DATA.