Bulgaria’s police have raided the office of TAD Group, seized computers and arrested one of its managers they suspect is related to the hacking of Bulgaria’s tax administration.
The news came shortly after Ivan Geshev, deputy-chief prosecutor and the sole candidate for chief prosecutor, accused TAD Group of being involved in cyber blackmailing and suggested the company was related to the hack attack, in an interview with BNT Bulgaria's public broadcaster.
Several days earlier, the prosecution arrested, but later released, 20-year old Kristian Boykov, an employee of TAD Group, accusing him of hacking the data of Bulgaria’s National Revenue Agency (NAP), getting access to the personal and financial data of millions of Bulgarians and leaking it to several Bulgarian media from a Russian email address.
According to Nova TV, after a second raid on TAD Group’s office, executed several hours after Geshev’s interview, the company’s commercial director Georgi Yankov was arrested.
According to information from NAP, the hacker or hackers accessed the system of Bulgaria’s tax agency, revealing tax declarations, personal identification numbers, names, addresses, income and other information kept by NAP.
Initially, Interior Minister Mladen Marinov suggested the attack might have been related to the government’s decision to buy US F-16 fighter jets and might come from Russia.
However, Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov denied such a possibility, saying the attack was executed before the government’s decision to sign the deal for the jets.
(intellinews.com)
