Hacker Caught by Swedish Security Police

A Swedish hacker who has disclosed a security flaw in the mail system accessed by embassies has been caught hold off. Dan Egerstad was caught in his apartment by Swedish Security Police and Swedish National Crime Force members. CDs, many computer systems, and portable hard drives were taken from his home for investigation.

As per the news by Vnunet on November 16, 2007, Dan had already warned the government agencies and embassies about their mail accounts being hacked. He made use of Tor to acquire the login details of almost 1,000 mail messages which includes almost 100 accounts of big corporations, foreign embassies and human right organizations.

Tor is used by those who demands strict privacy and don't want anyone to know where they visit on web and with whom they interact. It is encrypted while it is enroute and as it leaves the exit node and reaches its final destination, it is decrypted. Dan just sniffed the plaintext traffic which passes through its five exit nodes to get the user name and passwords of e-mail accounts.

In late august, Dan displayed the login information of embassies of India, Russia, Iran, Japan and many more. However, this information was taken offline from derangedsecurity.com where it has been posted. Dan also divulged information on how he carried out the hacking attack in September.

According to the news by Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), the hack requires tools which are easily available on net and Dan assures not to violate any laws. Simultaneously, he was also sure about the mail accounts which he used were already been compromised by hackers, so his actions prevented them in continuing their spying.

Dan was held free without any charges but remained under suspicion for charges of computer hacking which he refuses to accept. Rather, he said that he just followed traffic flowing across the Internet before inviting attention to an obvious security breach, as per the reports of The Register.

Dan informed Wired that his arrest was a result of the complaints to Sweden by foreign countries. Further, the investigators admit this and told him that China was one of the two countries that registered a complaint.

Related article: Hacker & Virus in MySpace

» SPAMfighter News - 11/30/2007