Hackers who compromised the database of Bell Canada in May 2017 reportedly got hold of an email address related to 1.9 million customers and phone numbers of more than 1.7 million customers. Then later the same hacking group committed the second attack in Jan’ 18 leading to another data breach affecting more than 100 thousand bell customers.
Now the news is out that 2 of the culprits behind the cyber incident were caught by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) on a recent note from Quebec and have admitted having committed the cybercrime on the Canadian telecom company in the above specified time frame.
The names of the culprits are Nana Koranteng and Jesiah Russell Francis from Montreal who will face charges of committing unauthorized use of a computer, fraud worth $5k in the conspiracy, laundering the processed related to crime, identity theft, and fraud.
Going by history, the RCMP began an investigation on the cyber incident in May’18 and dubbed it as Project Abalone. They followed an online booking trail of consumer products which led them to the criminals after a 13 months extensive investigation. The law enforcement agency suspects that the criminals after hacking the accounts used the data to commit crimes related to identity theft and used the phone numbers to buy online goods in last fall.
Criminal proceedings against the 2 Montreal’s will be carried on from now on and the RCMP is thinking to dig up the case further to see whether the arrested criminals were involved in other corporate data breaches or of a similar crime in the past.
