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 liable for hacking into the state’s income division in 2012 and stealing tax and checking account info for 3.6 million folks. The reply might now not be a thriller: KrebsOnSecurity discovered compelling clues suggesting the intrusion was carried out by the identical Russian hacking crew that stole of thousands and thousands of fee card data from huge field retailers like House Depot and Goal within the years that adopted.
Questions on who stole tax and monetary information 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 go the state’s legislation enforcement division. If authorised, this may be Keel’s third six-year time period in that function.
The Related Press experiences 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 feel the truth that we didn’t give you an entire lot of individuals’s info that received breached is a testomony to the work that folks have achieved on this case,” Keel asserted.
A ten-year retrospective printed in 2022 by The Publish and Courier in Columbia, S.C. mentioned investigators decided the breach started on Aug. 13, 2012, after a state IT contractor clicked a malicious hyperlink in an electronic mail. State officers mentioned 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 massive volumes of tax information within the yr surrounding the breach date.
On Oct. 7, 2012 — three days earlier than South Carolina officers say they first realized 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 info, SSN and all different info,” Rescator’s gross sales thread on the Russian-language crime discussion board Embargo learn. “If you buy your complete database, I provides you with entry to it.”
Every week later, Rescator posted an analogous supply on the unique Russian discussion board Mazafaka, saying he was promoting info from a U.S. state tax database, with out naming the state. Rescator mentioned the information uncovered included Social Safety Quantity (SSN), employer, identify, tackle, cellphone, taxable earnings, tax refund quantity, and checking account quantity.
“There may be plenty of info, I’m able to promote your complete database, with entry to the database, and in components,” Rescator instructed Mazafaka members. “There may be additionally info on company taxpayers.”
On Oct. 26, 2012, the state introduced the breach publicly. State officers mentioned they have 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 shall be up to date if any of them reply.
On Nov. 18, 2012, Rescator instructed fellow denizens of the discussion board Verified he was promoting a database of 65,000 data with checking account info 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, tackle, cellphone, tax ID, date of beginning, employer and occupation.
Requested to supply extra context in regards to the database on the market, Rescator instructed discussion board members the database included monetary data 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 info.
The AP says South Carolina paid $12 million to Experian for identification 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 significantly by hacks to Equifax, Yahoo, House Depot, Goal and PlayStation,” the AP’s Jeffrey Collins wrote.
Because it occurs, Rescator’s legal hacking crew was immediately liable for the 2013 breach at Goal and the 2014 hack of House Depot. The Goal intrusion noticed Rescator’s cybercrime retailers promoting roughly 40 million stolen fee playing cards, and 56 million playing cards from House Depot clients.
Who’s Rescator? On Dec. 14, 2023, KrebsOnSecurity printed the outcomes of a 10-year investigation into the identification of Rescator, a.ok.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 in some way the efforts of South Carolina officers following the breach might have lessened its affect on residents appears unlikely. The stolen tax and monetary information seems to have been bought overtly on cybercrime boards by one of many Russian underground’s most aggressive and profitable hacking crews.
Whereas there aren’t 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 identification theft happens when somebody makes use of a stolen identification and SSN to file a tax return in that individual’s identify claiming a fraudulent refund. Victims normally 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 could be victims of refund fraud, as can those that usually are not truly owed a refund from the U.S. Inner Income Service (IRS).
Based on a 2013 report from the Treasury Inspector Common’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 info on U.S. residents, after which filed fraudulent tax returns on these people claiming a big refund however at a special tackle.
It stays unclear why Shefel has by no means been formally implicated within the breaches at Goal, House Depot, or in South Carolina. It could be that Shefel has been indicted, and that these indictments stay sealed for some motive. Maybe prosecutors have been hoping Shefel would resolve to depart 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 depart. In January 2024, authorities in Australia, the US and the U.Ok. levied monetary sanctions towards 33-year-old Russian man Aleksandr Ermakov for allegedly stealing information on 10 million clients of the Australian medical health insurance big Medibank.
Every week after these sanctions have 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.
