Information was stolen from every website the victims visited, more than 420,000 of them, including leaders in virtually all industries across the world, smaller websites, and personal websites.
The New York Times described the hackers as a group of fewer than a dozen men in their 20s, based in a small city in south central Russia. According to Alex Holden, founder and chief Information security officer of Hold Security, labor is divided within the group. “Some are writing the programming, some are stealing the data. It’s like you would imagine a small company; everyone is trying to make a living.”
He also emphasized that there seems to be no connection between the hackers and the Russian government, as websites in Russia had also been hacked.
To date, the group has not sold many of the records online. However, the hackers seem to collect fees from various other groups who pay them to send spam on social networks.
