The leak of official data from the Ministry of Finance of Pakistan has become, apparently, the biggest cybersecurity breach that a Pakistani institution has ever faced.
In December 2021, an unknown hacker claimed to have hacked the computer systems of the Ministry of Finance of Pakistan, but the fact of the cyberattack was denied by the ministry’s spokesman Muzammil Aslam. Three months later, the hacker released some confidential data of the ministry, including confidential information related to other countries, international financial organizations, national institutions, ministries and departments. As proof, the hacker shared a set of e-mail data of an official of the Ministry of Finance for the period from 2014 to 2021. The recipients of the official’s emails were China, the United States, Saudi Arabia and dozens of other countries.
According to the newspaper ProPakistani, the emails related to China concerned the projects of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the JF-17 Thunder Block-III fighter-bomber, repayment and restructuring of Chinese loans and other joint ventures between the two countries. The data also contained detailed information on the repayment and restructuring of US loans, as well as loans to Saudi Arabia and oil loans.
The data set also shed light on the relationship with the World Bank, the Moody’s rating agency, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Fitch Ratings, S&P Global, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Credit Suisse and hundreds of other international financial institutions.
Finally, the leaked data also revealed all the details of the official minutes of the meetings of the Ministry of Finance of Pakistan.
According to the cybercriminal, additional unspecified confidential data sets may leak in the near future.