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Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

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Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#73
post #21

After watching The laundromat, I think it's big news. Although I will always be curious why countries are letting those small, insignificant islands and countries manage all this wealth, and why they're trusted to do it. This can't be secure or safe. I'm curious about the diplomacy and the political implications of this. What if their office get robbed? What if the island gets attacked? What if one of those shady ban…

Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. I have a fair bit of insight into this industry, both from friends, acquaintances, and family who use a variety of offshore structures to manage their wealth and from my own dealings (the company I founded and currently manage is offshored for tax and legal purposes). What people don’t realise is that aside from a couple outliers offshore jurisdictions aren’t that shady at all a…

> ...the United Kingdom being the leader here.

Having lived in the UK, I'm convinced that the real reason for Brexit is to preserve these offshore tax havens from any meddling by EU regulations.

It's not an accident that Brexit suddenly became crucially important to the Conservative Party only when the EU developed a new interest in unified financial regulations after all the turmoil of 2008-2011.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#74
post #69
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't tell you how they infiltrated to begin with so that they can sniff cookies and keystrokes. But my guess is they phished an employee. Edit: I missed that part,sorry.

I thought it was pretty clear. They had already developed a Sonic Wall VPN exploit. They used zmap to scan for vulnerable devices then grepped the hostnames for "bank". When they exploited the VPN it gave them the whole network. >In this case, on the other hand, it was the same Windows domain passwords that were used to authenticate against the VPN, so I could get a good user password, including that of the domain ad…

You're right, I tried to skip the rest and find the technical part but missed it.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#75
post #21

After watching The laundromat, I think it's big news. Although I will always be curious why countries are letting those small, insignificant islands and countries manage all this wealth, and why they're trusted to do it. This can't be secure or safe. I'm curious about the diplomacy and the political implications of this. What if their office get robbed? What if the island gets attacked? What if one of those shady ban…

Note that in his write-up of how the hack was accomplished (someone pasted a link in another comment) the hacker specifically mentions his attack was on Cayman National Bank of the Isle of Man. From cursory research it appears to be based there, not in the Cayman Islands.

The isle of Man is an odd place, curiously not part of the UK, linked to a lot of financial shenanigans. e.g. A disproportionate number of private jets are imported into Europe via The Isle of Man for tax reasons. (Link: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/05/isle-of-man-...)

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. I have a fair bit of insight into this industry, both from friends, acquaintances, and family who use a variety of offshore structures to manage their wealth and from my own dealings (the company I founded and currently manage is offshored for tax and legal purposes). What people don’t realise is that aside from a couple outliers offshore jurisdictions aren’t that shady at all a…

> tax and legal purposes This may be terribly naive, but doesn't that make the business de-facto illegal? What kind of legitimate business deserves to buck paying into the systems that support them? As a default I want to disagree, but I would like to know what business needs to operate outside of these constraints. Surely the businesses utilizing the favours of banks like Cayman are not being operated within tyranni…

>This may be terribly naive, but doesn't that make the business de-facto illegal? What kind of legitimate business deserves to buck paying into the systems that support them? As a default I want to disagree, but I would like to know what business needs to operate outside of these constraints.

These constraints that you speak of are entirely arbitrary (geographical delineation) and were designed for a time before the internet. I would instead ask the question why Western governments are refusing to get with the changing tides and reform their archaic taxation codes to account for an increasingly globalised economy.

>Surely the businesses utilizing the favours of banks like Cayman are not being operated within tyrannical countries (which is the first and only reasoning I can see for operating in the manor you prescribed).

Not at all. There certainly exists a subgroup of individuals, companies, and institutions that operate in jurisdictions where there is a huge amount of uncertainty, but there is also a very large contingent that offshores their business to reduce regulatory burden and reduce tax liabilities, many of whom are individuals and companies that you and I have heard of. I doubt they will be using Cayman National Bank though, it is more likely that they will be using banks that you and I have also heard of like Barclays or DBS.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#77
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. I have a fair bit of insight into this industry, both from friends, acquaintances, and family who use a variety of offshore structures to manage their wealth and from my own dealings (the company I founded and currently manage is offshored for tax and legal purposes). What people don’t realise is that aside from a couple outliers offshore jurisdictions aren’t that shady at all a…

"the company I founded and currently manage is offshored for tax and legal purposes" Simply curious, how do you feel about the ethics of this? Is it to reduce the tax burden in your company's home country?

In most cases, setting up your business there saves you no tax. It only saves you tax if you are a resident or if you don't tell the govt where you are a tax resident that you have a business there (not telling your govt is tremendously risky given that most of this information is now reported).

The main reason businesses are set up there is the legal benefits. Not just a stable legal environment but also because it is far easier to deal with international investors (most countries withhold tax from foreign investors at source, you can claim it back but that hits your ROI).

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#78
post #21

After watching The laundromat, I think it's big news. Although I will always be curious why countries are letting those small, insignificant islands and countries manage all this wealth, and why they're trusted to do it. This can't be secure or safe. I'm curious about the diplomacy and the political implications of this. What if their office get robbed? What if the island gets attacked? What if one of those shady ban…

Many tax havens are actually quite stable and have very reliable banking systems. Canada encourages "snow washing" with Limited Partnerships. Canada's banks are quite good and the corporate legislation allows a degree of anonymity. This structure has no obligation to file taxes in Canada. The partners in the structure have to pay taxes however if the partner is not a Canadian entity that obligation is in some other jurisdiction.

https://projects.thestar.com/panama-papers/canada-is-the-wor...

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#79
post #69
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't tell you how they infiltrated to begin with so that they can sniff cookies and keystrokes. But my guess is they phished an employee. Edit: I missed that part,sorry.

I thought it was pretty clear. They had already developed a Sonic Wall VPN exploit. They used zmap to scan for vulnerable devices then grepped the hostnames for "bank". When they exploited the VPN it gave them the whole network. >In this case, on the other hand, it was the same Windows domain passwords that were used to authenticate against the VPN, so I could get a good user password, including that of the domain ad…

To me, the scary part about this is: After Equifax, this is another big hack... and practically, it's one layer of defense and that's it. Shellshock, one password, everything's fucked. And yes, expletives are appropriate there. The rest is largely access maintenance, keyloggers and execution.

That's scary. Maybe I'll need to badger my boss about a serious pentest of everything.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#80
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the company I founded and currently manage is offshored for tax and legal purposes" Simply curious, how do you feel about the ethics of this? Is it to reduce the tax burden in your company's home country?

There are two dimensions here, one is the tax liability and the second is regulatory compliance. Yes, the tax liability is significantly reduced when using offshore structures and I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing especially since an ultra-low corporate tax rate makes it possible to offer our customers services at a lower price than otherwise - I see this as a good thing. The second is that regulatory compl…

> an ultra-low corporate tax rate makes it possible to offer our customers services at a lower price than otherwise - I see this as a good thing.

The claim that you’re transparently passing the savings of tax avoidance onto consumers rather than charging market-rate and pocketing the difference is both unlikely and unprovable. And even if you were charging less, this would essentially amount to an unfair, extra-legal competitive advantage.

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