Fahmi wants probe on new 'data leak' involving Maybank, Astro and EC

Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil will urge CyberSecurity Malaysia and the Personal Data Protection Department to probe a series of new alleged personal data breaches.

Fahmi said this today in a tweet in response to an advertisement on the alleged sale of 13 million personal records of voters, along with Maybank and Astro customers.

"This is a serious allegation involving a large volume of data," tweeted Fahmi.

Today, several Twitter users drew attention to the advertisement which contained "samples" of the datasets for sale.

On Dec 25, a user called Nimori posted an advertisement on a database-sharing online forum called ‘Breached’.

The user claimed to be in possession of 3.5 million personal records from Astro, 1.8 million records from Maybank and 7.2 million records from the Election Commission.

These records contained a home address, phone number and MyKad number. A similar advertisement appeared on Dec 10, posted by user Dreamstime.

In both cases, there was no asking price. Records of both Nimori and Dreamstime suggest that they are not specialising in Malaysian data, unlike ‘Breached’ user actifedot.

In April, actifedot claimed to be in possession of 22.5 million records from a government website. ‘Actifedot’ had asked for US$10,000 for a copy of the data.

Actifedot was notorious for mocking then-home minister Hamzah Zainudin by posting a "sample" with his personal data.

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