Malaysian charged with hacking into US bank

NEW YORK: A Malaysian man, charged on Thursday with hacking into computer networks of the US Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) and a defence contractor, was caught by Secret Service agents while selling stolen credit card numbers for US$1,000 (RM3,200) at a diner in New York.

Court documents released by US prosecutors said the man, identified as Lin Mun Poo, 32, was arrested on Oct 21, hours after arriving in New York.

He was indicted by a grand jury on Thursday on four charges, including hacking into the system of a US central bank branch in Cleveland, Ohio.

“In his post-arrest statement, the defendant admitted compromising the computer servers of a number of major financial institutions and companies,” US prosecutors in Brooklyn wrote in a letter to US District Judge Dora Irizarry, who was assigned the case.

It said Lin admitted exploiting a vulnerability he found in the bank’s computer system.
“The Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland, Ohio, has confirmed that an FRB computer network was hacked in June 2010, resulting in thousands of dollars in damages, affecting 10 or more computers,” the letter said.

A court hearing for the judge to consider a government request to continue to detain Lin was postponed. No new date has been scheduled yet. Lin’s court-appointed lawyer was not available to comment.

Lin is a Malaysian with no professional or family ties to the US, the letter said. He arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport from Europe with a round-trip ticket, planning to return on Nov 22.

“Within hours of his arrival at JFK, US Secret Service agents observed the defendant selling stolen credit card numbers for $1,000 at a diner in Brooklyn and arrested him shortly thereafter,” the letter to the judge said.

Other allegations against Lin include possession of more than 400,000 stolen credit cards and debit cards on an encrypted laptop computer that the agents seized.

If convicted, he faces a potential maximum prison sentence of between six-and-a-half years to eight years. - Reuters