Breached: Personal Data of Nearly Every Bulgarian Adult

"It is safe to say that the personal data of practically the whole Bulgarian adult population has been compromised."

This was the comment made by Vesselin Bontchev, cyber-security researcher and assistant professor at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, after the records of five million Bulgarian taxpayers (the country's population is seven million) were breached during an attack on Bulgaria's National Revenue Agency. Included in the stolen details were the names and addresses, personal income and tax declarations of individuals.

The incident occurred in June but the public only found out about it in mid-July after Bulgarian media received an email from one of the hackers, who described the government's cyber-security standards as a 'parody'.

Bulgarian police have arrested a 20yo cyber security researcher, Kristiyan Boykov, in relation to the attack (police are investigating whether more than one person was involved).

Boykov isn't a stranger to Bulgarian authorities and was thanked by the country's Deputy Education Minister Denitsa Sacheva in 2017, after he exposed several weaknesses in the Education Ministry's website.

If found guilty, Boykov faces up to five years in jail and a fine of up to US$5,700, while the National Revenue Agency is looking at a fine of anything up to US$22.43 million.

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