Syrian hacker revealed in Bulgaria

A Syrian hacker, residing on the territory of Bulgaria, has been revealed by the cybercrime section at the Bulgarian Chief Directorate for Combating Organized Crime, officials said here on Wednesday.

The hacker was a member of the hacker group Middle East Cyber Army, which according to initial data has successfully attacked more than 3,500 websites throughout the world including those of governments and corporations, by replacing their original content, the Ministry of Interior said in a press release.

During the operation conducted on Monday, the authorities confiscated computers, a laptop and external storages that contained specialized hacking tools developed by the Syrian hacker, the press release said.

Vasil Petkov, an officer in the cybercrime section, has recently said that "fortunately, cybercrime in Bulgaria is not world class, perhaps because the cybercriminals do not see a big target here."

According to the Bulgarian ministry of transport, information technology and communications, during the first eight months of 2014, the authorities registered more than 1,800 cases of breaching security mechanisms in the information systems on the Bulgarian Internet.

Examples cited included password thefts and viruses, with 244 cases posing a high degree of threat to government institutions, large organizations, and enterprises. Endit