Hacker steals entire nation's identity

A Greek hacker stole the personal data of about 9,000,000 Greek residents, which is approximately the same as the population of Greece itself. As Kevin at Lowering the Bar points out, this means that "If You're Greek, Someone Probably Just Stole Your Identity."

Third, according to some reports, the files "appeared to include duplicate entries," so the actual number of affected Greeks may be lower than 9 million, but we don't know how much lower yet. For now we have to assume the number is 9 million, so your answer should have been that there is approximately a 91% chance that any particular Greek citizen's identity has been stolen. That number is high enough that it seems reasonable to say that somebody just stole an entire country's identity, and to use italics to do it.

If You're Greek, Someone Probably Just Stole Your Identity

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MORE: greece • security

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http://twitter.com/MartianEmpress Rezeya Montecore

Am I a bad person for praying it’s some Turkish immigrant kid, and tomorrow morning every single member of the Golden Dawn will be penniless?
http://www.facebook.com/fritterfae Eric Riley

We all know it was Carmen SanDiego.
IamInnocent

Unfortunately for him, the credit cards of every Greek are all maxed out.
- awjt
  
  ^ winner
- That_Anonymous_Coward
  
  There is always Western Sky and other “lenders”
  
  hxxp://www.westernsky.com/General/Rates.aspx
  yes I broke it on purpose.
  
  342.86% APR for a $500 loan with a $350 loan fee tacked on…
http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy

Naw dawg, it was a Greek hacker so they all cool with their entire country’s identity, it’s just going to be a bit o’ mix n’ match on names and shit fo while
L_Mariachi

Why don’t the same objections to calling copyright violations “theft” appertain to “identity theft?”
- http://twitter.com/trempls tré
  
  Because making Lil’ Wayne wait a few more iTunes downloads to add on to his summer home is different than using 3 year old Zakos’ identity to take out loans in a collapsing economy.
- http://bhtooefr.org/ Eric Rucker
  
  Because identity theft actually deprives access to things that your identity can be used to get. You can’t just make another copy of your identity, your identity is damaged.
  - L_Mariachi
    
    Still, illicitly obtaining personal information is not the same thing as using that information to engage in fraud. It’s not theft until you use the obtained identity to, say, get a replacement bank card and empty the victim’s checking account.
    - dragonfrog
      
      If the identities were obtained fraudulently in the first place, I don’t know that you would need plans to engage in further fraud.
      - ocker3
        
        People willing to go to the first step are usually planning to go to the second, and it Certainly makes it easier for someone else to do it.
DevinC

I wondered if something was up. In the past two days I’ve received spam email from alcibiades@greekmail.com (who wanted to sell me his secrets to picking up women), s1syphus@rockbottom.com (who wants me to hold on to ten million drachmas until he can get out of whatever it is he’s doing right now), pythag0raz (some kind of bean-worshipping cult) and priapus@olympus.com (…guess.)
Tribune

All your greeks are belong to us?
http://twitter.com/chriscoreline chris coreline

My Greek colleague spotted this gem on another news site:

“how could this have happened!!?!??!oneone”
“I have a theory: Username – “admin”, password – “password”
- Ashen Victor
  
  My theory is that millions of greeks suddenly appeared in Nigeria…
oriste

In a country where we don’t know how many civil (?) servants we have to a few hundred thousand close, 9 million is just an abstract arbitrary figure that can represent any value between 9 and what you people know as 9,000,000. Don’t fret too much over it. Peace.
http://twitter.com/chrisjimson chris jimson

“If You’re Greek, Someone Probably Just Stole Your Identity.”
Well, in a country with a long history of classical philosophers, this should add some needed grist to the mill of the age old question “who am I anyway?”
Ryan Lenethen

Not to worry, its not worth anything…
donpdonp

Someone keeps ‘stealing the identity’ of my entire city, printing it on thin yellow paper, binding it, and leaving it on my doorstep!
- ocker3
  
  Nah, that’s a government plot to keep the recycles in business
http://twitter.com/baskinsy Νιαααρρρρρ

He was not a hacker… Just someone who paid for information from the national tax system. Inside job, the old fashioned way.