Three people have been arrested in connection with the hacking and selling of personal information of more than 15 million people to illegal businesses.
Pol Lt Gen Thana Chuwong, acting deputy national police chief, on Tuesday told a press briefing that the investigation was expanded from the earlier arrest of an engineer in Phuket, who is accused of selling the personal data of at least two million people to illegal businesses.
The engineer told police he bought the data from a middleman who claimed to have access to the personal data of some 15 million people. The middleman was believed to be linked to people involved in stealing the data.
The investigation led police to the three arrested people whose surnames were withheld. Pasin, 41, is an insurance broker suspected of stealing the data of millions of customers; Nattapong, 28, a programmer who developed the API Bypass Face Scan; and Yodchai, 24, an administrator of a Facebook page that sold personal data obtained from the database of online gambling sites.
Mr Nattapong told police the hacking was made possible via a software program developed to conduct financial transactions via a browser system without using a mobile banking application if the hacker knew the person's bank account data. This way, large amounts of money would be transferred to accounts via a browser system controlled by the hacker.
Another program was coded to bypass face scanning needed for transferring more than 50,000 baht at a time. The Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau is working to unravel the theft method. The three men were charged with breaching computer and personal data protection laws.
