Last week the European Parliament approved a proposal which would invest €9.2 million into its new Digital Europe programme to support tech and . While the EP approved of this measure, this week the world of and , did not. And they made it known.
In an attempt to send a clear message to the EP that the and community does not want governmental intervention in their Anarcho-capitalistic system, a previously unknown group of hackers going under the pseudonym ‘Magnussen’ conducted a data-breaching assault on the EP. They used a hard-to-trace malware, which granted the ‘Magnussen’ group unauthorized access to sensitive information and assets. Based on clear evidence of strong hacking skills and their extreme support of Anarcho-capitalism, it is believed that ‘Magnussen’ may be a recent splinter-group of the international hacktivist group, Anonymous.
Based on what is known so far, the consequences of the data breach were dire — to date, the ‘Magnussen’ hacktivists stole addresses that the EP Think Tank was using to experiment with financial transfers involving large quantities of money from the €9.2 million budget, and more importantly, they stole the private keys of those addresses. Private keys to a , are like a pin code to a bank account. Worse yet, in an attempt at blackmail, the ‘Magnussen’ group has reached out to the EP and stated that unless the EP stops all its work in the field of and crypto, the group will sell the newly-attained addresses and private keys on the black market within 24 hours of the breach together with the money in those wallets, suggesting that the actual money in those is of no interest to the group. To make matters worse ‘Magnussen’, together with the addresses and private keys, also stole part of the Digital Europe programmes’ budget, to prove that their threats are not empty, and they can influence the work of the EP. The most bizarre part of this theft is the quantity that was stolen. Out of approximately €4 million used for the experimental financial transfers, the hacktivist group stole precisely €3,012,009.00. So far, no concrete explanation for this specific number has been found.
It is suspected that this data-breach was conducted in an attempt to undermine the trust of EU member states toward the EP, thus impeding the EU’s attempt to transition from a Single Market, to a Digital Single Market.
Published at Mon, 13 May 2019 22:14:06 +0000
