Man Pleads Guilty To Hacking Servers At Federal Reserve Bank

A Malaysian citizen last week confessed to compromising servers at FedComp, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and others to steal credit and debit card information.

Lin Mun Poo, 32, a Malaysian citizen, pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn to possessing stolen credit and debit card numbers.

According to a detention letter and other documents filed with the court at the original indictment in November, Lin Mun Poo hacked servers belonging to financial institutions, defense contractors, and major corporations and then sold or traded the data. When he was arrested in October, Lin Mun Poo was in possession of an encrypted laptop containing personal and credit card data of some 400,000 individuals, authorities say. Among the data were records from FedComp, a data processor for federal credit unions. Authorities suspect that Lin Mun Poo used FedComp to gain unauthorized access to the data of other federal credit unions. "By hacking into the FedComp system, the defendant had unauthorized access to the data of the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York Federal Credit Union and the Mercer County New Jersey Teachers’ Federal Credit Union, among other victims," a court filing says. "The defendant also admitted to compromising the computer networks of several major international banks and companies, and admitted earning money by finding and exploiting network vulnerabilities or trading and selling the information contained therein." Lin Mun Poo pleaded guilty to four counts and could face as much as 10 years in jail. Have a comment on this story? Please click "Comment" below. If you'd like to contact Dark Reading's editors directly, send us a message.