Austria's Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt/BK) revealed on 25 January that it has arrested a 25-year-old Dutch hacker for reportedly stealing data from nearly its entire population. ITPro reports the hacker stole data that belonged to 9 million Austrians. The organization responsible for collecting television and radio fees for Austria, the Fees Info Service (GIS), was said to be the source of the data breach. GIS announced in May 2020 that an event had occurred and that it was working with authorities on the matter.

"As it became known today, large amounts of data may have been stolen, although it cannot be ruled out that this data came from the sphere of influence of the GIS," said the GIS in a written statement to the APA. Managing Director Harald Krauter emphasizes that he works together with the authorities and that he has made the GIS systems available for checks." As our data protection experts assure us, there were no omissions on the part of the GIS. This is also underpinned by the ISO certification of the GIS IT systems, which was renewed in February," emphasized Krauter."

Die Presse has reported that the Dutch hacker was able to obtain the data due to a glitch while a contracted Viennese IT company performed maintenance on the GIS database. It is believed that an employee accidentally left the database unprotected and accessible to the internet for about a week before it was discovered.