"President's Salary and Home Address Leaked"...Uproar Over Alleged 400 Million Personal Records Exposed on Dark Web

Hacker Claims to Possess Over 400 Million Records
Authorities Confirm Some of the Released Sample Matches Actual Data

There are claims that a large-scale leak of personal information—including salaries, addresses, and phone numbers of Costa Rican citizens—has been exposed on the dark web, prompting local authorities to launch an investigation. Reports indicate that the data released by the hacker also allegedly includes information believed to be related to Laura Fernandez, President of Costa Rica.

Laura Fernandez, President of Costa Rica. Instagram

According to Costa Rican daily La Nacion and UPI on September 20 (local time), a post recently appeared on an anonymous, dark web site frequently used by hackers, claiming to have secured a large-scale database related to Costa Rican citizens.

The poster claimed to possess over 400 million records. Of these, records related to salary accounted for approximately 374.6 million, making up the largest share, followed by 21.8 million address records, 18.74 million court-related records, and 13.45 million phone numbers. The poster further claimed to have secured email addresses, marital status, property ownership details, photos, and more.

However, this number does not represent the actual number of victims affected. Since a single individual's information could appear multiple times across salary, address, phone number, and other databases, there may be discrepancies between the number of total records and the number of affected persons. Additionally, it has not been confirmed whether all of the more than 400 million records claimed by the hacker represent real information.

The poster released a sample of the claimed data, which reportedly included information believed to be related to President Fernandez. However, authorities have not officially confirmed whether this information actually belongs to the president.

After analyzing around 10,000 lines of the sample released, Costa Rican authorities found that some of the data matched the personal information of actual citizens. The leaked records are reported to contain not only personal identification information, but also sensitive details such as salaries, assets, and legal or employment-related data.

In response, the Costa Rican Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications announced that agencies including the National Cybersecurity Agency are currently investigating the source of the breach and the actual scale of the exposure.

So far, authorities have not confirmed any breaches of specific government agency networks. The Central Bank of Costa Rica also stated that it found no signs of intrusion into its own systems and emphasized that there is no evidence suggesting the leaked data originated from information managed by the Central Bank.

Authorities warned that the exposed information could be exploited for crimes such as voice phishing, identity theft, or financial fraud. People were urged not to open links or attachments in messages or emails from unknown sources, and to be cautious of requests for personal or financial information. Authorities also recommended using different passwords for each account and enabling multi-factor authentication.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.