Everything We Know About the Great Celebrity Hack of 2013... Is Overrated
In case you missed the most boring hack in the history of hacking unless you're worried about the terms of Kim Kardashian's mortgage (it's 30 years!) allow us to get you up to speed: On Monday afternoon TMZ reportedthe release of financial information for a number of celebritiesHillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Paris Hilton, Jay-Z and Beyonc, and, somewhat incongruously, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. TMZ didn't identify the site, but Russia Today did, and it's calledExposed.SU.
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Before you go clicking through, we'll save you the effort: What you'll find is boring. It's mostly credit reports for celebrities. Statements of bill payments. Mortgages. Car loans. You will learn that Jay-Z and Beyonc are rich! Paris Hilton is less rich, and four times had her Bank of America card lost or stolen! Hillary Clinton used to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C.! Eric Holder has a mortgage! The site does include Social Security numbers and dates of birth, so if you ever wanted to open a credit ! card as Ashton Kutcher, I suppose it could be helpful in that sense. Otherwise: eh.
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So who's behind it? The code doesn't offer much of a clue. The site, hosted with CloudFlare, was registered on March 6, 2013, using the .su top-level domain, which was originally reserved for the former Soviet Union. It's a weird choice, to be sure, perhaps meant to suggest that the hacked is Russian. Other evidence belies that, like the inclusion of LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, whose information page is tagged with #YouCantCornerTheDorner, a reference to deceased fugitive Chris Dorner. The case was prominent, but it's hard to believe a Russian hacker is that incensed enough about it to access Beck's information. The pages don't offer much else in the way of hints simple HTML, using images loading directly from external hosts.
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The best clue may lie in what was provided. Each person's full name, Social Security number, date of birth, and previous addresses are shown data that exists within the credit reports themselves. That suggests that the hack quite possibly originated with some agency that provides names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers, perhaps even a credit agency of some sort. There's not much offered from the reports themselves; they're from a range of agencies and appear to have been generated over the weekend.
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One last bit of disappointment: Russia Today tried calling Beyonc at one of the numbers given. It reached her management office. It's almost as though celebrities are smart enough to shiled personal information as much as possible. Nonetheless, you should still definitely see if Hillary Clinton still lives at that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address. Feel free to just hop over the fence.