Vaduz Castle above the capital of Liechtenstein, the Alpine financial principality.

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TechnologyAP · ReutersAug 3, 2026

A cyberattack on Liechtenstein's business register exposes information on about 31,000 companies and foundations, including the people behind them, officials say

Hackers accessed Liechtenstein's central register of legal entities, obtaining data on roughly 31,000 companies and foundations along with details of the beneficial owners behind them, authorities said. The tiny Alpine principality is a well-known offshore financial center, making the breach potentially sensitive for wealthy account holders worldwide. Officials said they were investigating the scope of the intrusion.

Analogies

Clodius Burns the Roman Register

eum qui aedem nympharum incendit ut memoriam publicam recensionis tabulis publicis impressam exstingueret
Cicero, Pro Milone 73 (Latin text, ed. A. C. Clark), Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University

Sunlight on the Money Trust

Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman. And publicity has already played an important part in the struggle against the Money Trust.
Louis D. Brandeis, Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It, ch. V, 'What Publicity Can Do' (1914), Project Gutenberg ebook #57819

The Document That Confers Power

“Yes,” replied the Prefect; “and the power thus attained has, for some months past, been wielded, for political purposes, to a very dangerous extent. The personage robbed is more thoroughly convinced, every day, of the necessity of reclaiming her letter.”
Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Purloined Letter' (1845), in The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #2148

Open, Sesame: The Vault Cracked Open

The finest man among them, whom Ali Baba took to be their captain, went a little way among some bushes, and said: “Open, Sesame!” so plainly that Ali Baba heard him. A door opened in the rocks, and having made the troop go in, he followed them, and the door shut again of itself.
'The Forty Thieves,' in Andrew Lang (ed.), The Blue Fairy Book (1889), Project Gutenberg ebook #503
A seated 16th-century moneychanger weighs gold coins on a small balance while his richly dressed wife beside him looks up from an illuminated prayer book toward the money.

Weighing the Hidden Wealth

A moneychanger tips gold coins onto a balance while his wife, distracted from her prayer book, watches the glint of the metal; on the shelf and table sit the instruments of a private financial world kept in ledgers and coin. Like a register of a wealth center's clients, the painting turns intimate, hidden riches into something meticulously counted and recorded, a small convex mirror hinting that an unseen eye is always watching what should stay private.
Quentin Matsys, The Money Changer and His Wife (1514), oil on panel, Musée du Louvre, Paris
In near-darkness an old bespectacled man holds a gold coin up to a candle flame, surrounded by stacks of ledgers, papers, sealed letters and money bags.

The Rich Man Alone with His Ledgers

By the glow of a single candle an old man peers through spectacles at a coin, hemmed in by piles of papers, account books, sealed documents and money bags heaped in the dark. Rembrandt's rich fool hoards a fortune of records and coin in secret, a fitting image for a register in which the private holdings of thousands are locked away until a single breach floods the shadows with light.
Rembrandt van Rijn, The Parable of the Rich Fool (The Money Changer) (1627), oil on oak panel, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin