Malaysian hacked into US Fed

AFP - Friday, November 19

NEW YORK (AFP) - – A sophisticated Malaysian cyber bandit hacked into the US Federal Reserve's computers and also stole nearly half a million credit and debit card numbers, US prosecutors in New York said.

Lin Mun Poo, a Malaysian resident and citizen, was arrested on October 21 soon after entering the United States and was indicted by grand jury Thursday, the US attorney's office in Brooklyn said.

He allegedly hacked into the Cleveland, Ohio branch of the Fed, the US central bank, and in separate attacks also stole more than 400,000 card numbers, as well as breaching the defenses of numerous other systems.

Poo, who is being held in pre-trial detention, "made a career of compromising computer servers belonging to financial institutions, defense contractors, and major corporations, among others, and selling or trading the information," the US attorney's office said.

The US Secret Service arrested the 32-year-old a few hours after he flew to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

"Secret Service agents seized his heavily encrypted laptop computer, which contained a massive quantity of financial account data and personal identifying information that he had allegedly obtained by hacking," the prosecutor's office said.

Brian Parr, the head of the Secret Service's New York office, said cyber crimes "not only affect our nation's financial infrastructure, but are also an ongoing threat to our national security."

Among the other alleged hacking by Poo, the Secret Service said he entered a Pentagon contractor's system "potentially compromising highly sensitive military logistics information."

Earlier this week, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that cyber attacks pose a "huge" threat.