A hacker broke into Bulgaria's largest tax database, and stole the financial details of every working adult in the country, before releasing them online.
In their search for the perpetrator, police arrested year-old Kristian Boykov last Tuesday, charging him with committing a computer crime against critical infrastructure on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Bulgaria's National Revenue Agency building in Sofia. Police raided Boykov's home in Sofia on Wednesday and seized computer devices containing encrypted data, Reuters reported.
Yavor Kolev, head of the police's cybersecurity unit, said the evidence "suggests that the suspect is connected to the crime. Read more: 7 things you can hire a hacker to do and how much it will generally cost. Boykov's initial charge, which could have seen him face a maximum of eight years in jail, was downgraded by the prosecutor's office on Thursday due to a "lack of previous criminal record, his good character, and young age," the Sofia News Agency reported.
He could now face three years in jail on one charge of committing a crime against an information system. The information is now freely available to anyone. Read more: A security flaw found in WhatsApp and Telegram on Android lets hackers mess with your photos, payments, and voice notes. On July 17, Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borissov called Boykov a "wizard," and said the state needs to hire security technicians with "unique brains" like his.
The nature of the attack has led some cyber-security experts to label the perpetrator a "white hat hacker" β meaning he or she seeks to expose a weaknesses in government software to raise awareness. NPR reported that Boykov had previously hacked the Bulgarian education ministry's website in β just to expose its vulnerabilities.
