David Bernal recently had an update on the FocaLeaks incident previously covered by this site and DDoSecrets.
On September 22, Bernal reported that Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, director of the National Civil Police (PNC), confirmed that they were conducting an internal investigation into FocaLeaks and a second with the Attorney General’s Office to find the perpetrators.
Of note (to this site, anyway), Chicas reportedly claimed that it was an old database.
DataBreaches.net has no idea what Chicas means by “old,” but the unredacted data sample this site sent to PNC and their National Security Advisor as part of our original inquiry to them had been last updated in January, 2021. Does that make the database “old?” What if the data in the database last updated in January still worked?
According to DataBreaches.net’s sources — a spokesperson for FocaLeaks and one of those actively involved in the hacking — the logins that they exfiltrated were working within a few days prior to publication of the leak. That second individual, who is not a native English speaker, explained (the following is unedited):
the file login imei , it was overturned in January. do not update it, because it already had the logins.
, the data of the agents if they are recent , That file of the agents was obtained the day they made the illegal arrest of Mario Gomez
So it seems that they are saying that the agents’ data file was current as of the day PNC arrested Mario Gomez on September 1. And there was no need to update the second file as it already contained immutable IMEI numbers and the pins reportedly hadn’t been changed.
DataBreaches.net asked the second individual a few more questions to be sure what they were claiming. At one point in the exchange, this site asked, “Until the PNC took the domain down a few weeks ago, you knew for a fact that those logins still worked and PNC hadn’t done anything to change any security?” They answered:
That’s right, they didn’t even know we had it, the policemen here don’t know much about computer science, if you see the requests they don’t have any kind of token in their requests.
As DataBreaches.net reported previously, this site reached out to PNC and El Salvador’s National Security Advisor. They logged our press inquiry as a “complaint” and issued a complaint number, but we have received no update about any investigation or findings. In light of their statement to El Salvador news media about an “internal investigation,” however, DataBreaches.net has reached out to them again to ask whether this meant that they were looking into whether this was an insider breach. DataBreaches.net suspects that they just meant that PNC is conducting its own investigation while the prosecutor’s office conducts theirs, but we’ll see.