Researchers at security firm Webroot Software have
discovered tens of thousands of stolen identities from more than
120 countries on an FTP server in the US.
It is believed that the identities were stolen by a Trojan horse
virus installed on the users’ machines when they accessed a teen
porn website.
The FBI is now investigating the stolen information, which
includes names, phone numbers, social security numbers, and user
log-ins and passwords for thousands of other websites accessed by
the users.
The Trojan used in the collection of data took advantage of
security vulnerabilities in users’ web browsers.
Webroot said the stolen data was stored on an FTP server hosted
by nLayer Communications in New York, which had no knowledge of who
was behind the scam.
As the stolen information had been categorised into the users’
different countries, it is thought that those behind the theft
intended to sell the data on.
