Canadian Mounties arrest teen for alleged Heartbleed hack attack

17 Apr 2014

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A 19-year-old Ontario teen has been arrested by a Canadian cyber crime unit for allegedly hacking into the country's tax agency using the Heartbleed internet security bug.

Stephen Arthuro Solis-Reyes has been held responsible for the Heartbleed-assisted breach at the Canadian Revenue Agency, which compromised the personal data of over 900 citizens, after an investigation, which stretched over five days.

According to the Verge, the boy had been charged with 'unauthorized use of a computer' and 'mischief in relation to data.'

The attack took place on Friday, following the Heartbleed bug being made public, resulting in the attackers pulling random snippets of data from the server's working memory, which included sensitive financial information.

The service shut down as a result, and according to the government, it was still in the process of notifying all the Canadian citizens affected by the breach, the report said.

"The RCMP treated this breach of security as a high priority case and mobilized the necessary resources to resolve the matter as quickly as possible," assistant commissioner Gilles Michaud said in a statement.

"Investigators from National Division, along with our counterparts in (Ontario) Division have been working tirelessly over the last four days analyzing data, following leads, conducting interviews, obtaining and executing legal authorizations and liaising with our partners."

Solis-Reyes allegedly exploited the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL running on the CRA's servers, to swipe 900 social insurance numbers. According to the CRA whoever hacked the systems gathered the sensitive information during a six-hour window on 9 April, which was after the first public reports of the flaw and before the computers were patched.

The attack comes as one of the first known instances of hackers actively exploiting the Heartbleed condition in the wild to steal user data.

However, if reports were to be believed, the NSA and (likely) other government organisations had been exploiting the flaw over years for gathering intelligence info.

According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), it detained Solis-Reyes without incident on 15 April. The police also seized computer equipment from his home.

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