Thread by @UR_Ninja

#Breaking: Massive Hack Strikes Offshore Cayman National Bank and Trust
unicornriot.ninja/2019/massive-h…
A blast of sunshine has hit a secretive banking network used by global ultra-wealthy figures following a massive hack by #Hacktivist “Phineas Fisher“ ...

Fisher hacked the Cayman National Bank and Trust, which serves nearly 1,500 accounts in Isle of Man. Transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets has began publishing copies of the bank’s servers, a cache of documents as well as communications among bankers and others.

Journalists around the world have been investigating this data for months and have begun publishing the first of their stories.

Following the hack, a manifesto was uploaded to the Internet addressing the motivation for hacking financial services companies.

Included: previously unpublished code which the author claims was used to break into “Hacking Team”, an Italian surveillance company. Hacking Team was an elite corporation that specialized in developing malware until Phineas Fisher hacked them and published their code online.

Unicorn Riot has obtained the HackBack announcement text released exclusively in Spanish characterized as “Desde las montañas del Sureste Cibernético” (‘From the mountains of the Cyber Southeast’). It bills itself as a “HackBack” DIY guide for “Una guía DIY para robar bancos”

Also included were introductions to common info security tools such as Metasploit and observations about previous major bank hacks, suspicious activities on SWIFT (an international financial network), and ASCII art such as a skeleton saying “Be Gay, Do Crimes” in Spanish.

The manifesto includes political analysis on how financial institutions are key enforcers for the global class structure. Among poetic interludes, statements like “Privacidad para los débiles, transparencia para los poderosos” (Privacy for the weak, transparency for the powerful)

The message also includes an Easter egg: a large block of computer text (#Perl code) shaped like a star that when executed returns a Zapatista text, the Sixth Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle.

Who is “Phineas Fisher”?
A self-described libertarian socialist “Phineas Fisher” lays claim to the hack - became known following a hack to Gamma Group, a corporation that developed the malicious “#FinFisher” software used to target civil society and journalists by govts worldwide

Phineas Fisher’s first public hack was against Gamma Group before moving on to exposing Hacking Team. In 2016, Fisher gave an interview using a puppet and voice actor reading chat messages. In 2018, Fisher discussed w @Crimethinc the strategy behind fighting surveillance corps.

@crimethinc Unicorn Riot has also been told the mid-November date of this release is in reference to Tupac Katari, a key figure in Andean South American Indigenous history who led a siege of La Paz (currently the capital of Bolivia).

@crimethinc What is Cayman National Bank and Trust Offshore Bank?
Cayman National has a branch on Isle of Man, a small British island dominion btwn England & N. Ireland specialized in offshore banking-assists customers, often ultra-wealthy, to move large sums w anonymity, avoid tax liability

@crimethinc The Cayman National leak is similar to #PanamaPapers
In 2016, Unicorn Riot covered how #MossackFonseca, the law firm at the center of that leak, had certain misconfigurations on their client web portal.
unicornriot.ninja/2016/oracle-ch…

@crimethinc The transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS / @DDoSecrets ) obtained the cache in two tranches of roughly a terabyte each, for a total of about 2.21 Terabytes. DDoS has begun publishing the release >

https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets/status/1195899716653010945

@crimethinc @DDoSecrets An analysis of locations of over 1,400 client accounts was released to Unicorn Riot:
780 from Isle of Man, 272 from Cyprus, 153 from the UK, 107 from the Cayman Islands, 51 from the British Virgin Islands, 12 from the Seychelles, 11 from the U.S., 7 from Belize, 7 from Ireland,

@crimethinc @DDoSecrets Don't forget - your support makes our work possible. By covering issues like offshore banking we help educate the public about this little-understood dimension of the global financial system, that directly affects dozens of countries
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@crimethinc @DDoSecrets The XLS spreadsheet file, on its additional tabs, also includes detailed financial information about more than 3800 companies, trusts and individual accounts managed by Cayman National for clients around the world, including account balances.

@crimethinc @DDoSecrets A July 2016 index of 22 “politically exposed persons” (PEPs) was provided to Unicorn Riot, which includes some prominent business-people involved in controversies and their families.

@crimethinc @DDoSecrets According to France-based Financial Action Task Force, a PEP is an “individual who is or has been entrusted with a prominent public function. […] [M]any PEPs are in positions that potentially can be abused,” incl. risks for money laundering, corruption, terror financing, bribery

@crimethinc @DDoSecrets The former head of a Russian bank, Andrey Borodin and his wife and mother are among those listed.
Ariel “Ari” Emanuel, a high-profile entertainment agent in Hollywood and sibling of former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is also among the PEP roster.

@crimethinc @DDoSecrets Journalists at media organizations around the world have been investigating the data in this leak for several months, under a publishing embargo that was just lifted by @DDoSecrets - the transparency organization to whom #phineasFisher gave the hacked data.

@crimethinc @DDoSecrets Similar to the disclosure of the #PanamaPapers, the exposure of corporate entities designed to conceal ownership and avoid tax burdens may cause political fallout in multiple countries.
More than 3000 entities are listed in the XLS spreadsheet tabs attached to our report.

@crimethinc @DDoSecrets Unicorn Riot has provided a lightly edited version of the Spanish-language manifesto released today, with a clickable table of contents and reference hyperlinks covering both social and technical dimensions of this #HackBack release >>>
unicornriot.ninja/2019/massive-h…

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