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 Lawbreakers & Cybercrime

AT&T; iPad hackers arrested, facing federal charges

Angela Moscaritolo January 18, 2011

Federal prosecutors in New Jersey have filed charges against two individuals believed to have stolen the personal information of 120,000 iPad users from AT&T;'s network this past June.
 

DHS zeroing in on Vietnamese-based fraud ring

Angela Moscaritolo January 04, 2011

Operation eMule is targeting a Vietnamese-based fraud operation believed to have duped U.S. retailers out of millions of dollars.
 

Accused Mega-D botnet operator arrested

Angela Moscaritolo December 03, 2010

A Russian man who is believed to be the operator of the Mega-D botnet, one of the largest spam senders in the world, has been arrested and is scheduled to be arraigned on Friday in federal court.
 

Malaysian man charged with hacking into bank systems

Dan Kaplan November 19, 2010

A Malaysian man was indicted Thursday on charges he hacked into the networks of a number of financial institutions to amass some 400,000 stolen credit and debit card numbers, according to federal prosecutors.
 

Palin hacker sentenced to one year in custody

Angela Moscaritolo November 15, 2010

The student convicted of hacking into the Yahoo email account of Sarah Palin while she was the Republican candidate for vice president has been sentenced to one year and one day inside a halfway house, according to reports. David Kernell, 22, was found guilty in late April to charges of unlawful computer access and obstruction of justice. Kernell was a 20-year-old economics student at the University of Tennessee in 2008 when he hacked his way past security questions to access Palin's personal email account. Kernell gained access by providing Palin's birth date and ZIP code to Yahoo's password retrieval system. Prosecutors had sought an 18-month prison sentence. — AM
 

Two alleged Zeus mules arrested in Wisconsin

Angela Moscaritolo November 05, 2010

Two Moldovan men were charged this week for their involvement with the Zeus trojan, which has been used to steal millions of dollars from U.S. bank accounts. Dorin Codreanu and Lilian Adam, both 21, are believed to have been "money mules," responsible for transferring stolen funds to accomplices overseas. The pair was arrested in Wisconsin and is set to be transferred to New York to face charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, according to reports. The men are among the 37 individuals charged late last month in U.S. District Court in Manhattan for their role in the scheme. — AM
 

Disgruntled IT head sentenced for hacking website

Angela Moscaritolo November 01, 2010

A former IT head in Virginia, upset about being fired, was sentenced Friday to two years and three months in prison for hacking into his former employer's website to delete files.
 

Botnet sending Bredolab trojan dismantled; one arrested

Dan Kaplan October 26, 2010

Dutch authorities said Monday that a 27-year-old Armenian man has been charged as being the mastermind behind the Bredolab botnet, a network of millions of compromised computers worldwide.
 

Texas insider sentenced to 15 years for medical ID theft

Angela Moscaritolo October 19, 2010

A Texas woman's 15-year prison sentence for stealing hospital patient information underscores a continued upswing in medical identity theft cases.
 

Disgruntled Fannie Mae "logic bomber" found guilty

Dan Kaplan October 11, 2010

A federal jury in Baltimore has convicted a former Fannie Mae programmer of computer intrusion after he sought to destroy more than 4,000 company servers by planting a malicious script that was scheduled to activate roughly three months after he was fired. Rajendrasinh Makwana, 36, faces up to 10 years in prison for seeding a common application with "logic bomb" malware on Oct. 24, 2008, the day he was fired, the U.S. Department of Justice said last week in a news release. Five days later, a senior engineer discovered the disgruntled Makwana's actions, which were meant to destroy financial, securities and mortgage information. Makwana, who had pleaded innocent, is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 8. — DK
 

FBI announces arrest of five Zeus orchestrators

Dan Kaplan October 01, 2010

The FBI on Friday announced the arrests of five individuals in the Ukraine, key members of a Zeus gang that plundered bank accounts to the tune of $70 million.
 

Zeus money mule takedown unveiled: 37 indictments in Operation Aching Mule

Charles Jeter, ESET cybercrime investigator October 01, 2010

Our G-men and G-women are going after the bad guys.
 

U.S. authorities charge 70 money mules in Zeus ring

Angela Moscaritolo September 30, 2010

State and federal prosecutors on Thursday announced a massive bust of money mules who were involved in a ring that bilked U.S. bank account holders out of millions through the spread of the Zeus trojan.
 

U.K. police arrest 19 in major Zeus bust

Angela Moscaritolo September 29, 2010

Police in the U.K. have arrested 19 individuals believed to be part of an organized cybercrime network that used the Zeus trojan to steal millions of dollars from U.K. bank accounts.
 

Two remaining Comcast.net hijackers sentenced

Dan Kaplan September 27, 2010

The remaining two members of a cybergang implicated in a 2008 scheme that redirected visitors wishing to reach Comcast.net to websites of the hackers' choosing each have been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. Christopher Lewis, 20, of Newark, Del. and Michael Nebel, 28, of Kalamazoo, Mich., who both pleaded guilty earlier this year, were sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. Last month, a co-conspirator, James Black, 21, of Tumwater, Wash., received four months in prison. Comcast lost $128,578 as a result of the prank, which prevented customers from retrieving their email, voicemail and other services. Instead, they reached sites created by the defendants to gloat of their ruse. — DK
 

Extradited VoIP hacker sentenced to 10 years

Angela Moscaritolo September 24, 2010

The mastermind behind a scheme to hack into internet phone networks and resell services for a profit was sentenced Friday to 10 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey.
 

NBA star Shaquille O'Neal accused of hacking

Angela Moscaritolo September 16, 2010

A recently filed lawsuit accuses four-time NBA champion Shaquille O'Neal of voicemail hacking, but one security expert wonders whether the allegations fit the hacker label.
 

Cache of stolen FTP credentials discovered

Angela Moscaritolo September 15, 2010

Security researchers recently stumbled upon a malicious website that housed a cache of stolen FTP credentials.
 

Prison sentence for RBS hacker suspended in Russia

Angela Moscaritolo September 09, 2010

One of the leaders of a cybercriminal gang that hacked into payment services provider RBS WorldPay and stole $9 million has received a six-year suspended sentence in Russia, according to reports.
 

Microsoft to assume control over Waledac domains

Angela Moscaritolo September 08, 2010

Security industry efforts to permanently shut down the prolific Waledac botnet have been successful, according to Microsoft.
 

Nigerian man imprisoned on false promise of fortune

Dan Kaplan September 03, 2010

A Nigerian man was sentenced Friday to nearly 13 years in prison for helping to mastermind an "advance-fee" scheme built on the promise of riches.
 

Arrested seller of card data to be extradited to U.S.

Angela Moscaritolo August 12, 2010

A Russian man believed to be one of the most prolific sellers of stolen credit card data was arrested over the weekend in France, federal prosecutors said.
 

Comcast hijacker gets four months in prison

Angela Moscaritolo August 11, 2010

A member of the Kryogeniks gang that took down Comcast's home page for several hours in 2008 was sentenced Monday to four months in prison, according to the U.S. attorney's office. James Robert Black Jr., 21, of Tumwater, Wash. and two other individuals accessed Comcast's account in May 2008 to change the site's DNS records so that users who intended to visit comcast.net were redirected to a site under the hackers' control. Comcast lost $128,578 as a result of the prank, which prevented customers from retrieving their email, voicemail and other services. — AM
 

Disgruntled San Francisco admin sentenced to four years

Angela Moscaritolo August 09, 2010

Two years after he was charged with holding the city of San Francisco digitally hostage, a disgruntled former network administrator was sentenced to four years in prison.
 

Estonian man extradited to U.S. to face hacking charges

Dan Kaplan August 09, 2010

An Estonian man becomes the first accused RBS WorldPay hacker to be extradited to the United States to stand trial on federal charges.
 

ID thief receives 30 months in prison

Angela Moscaritolo June 28, 2010

A California woman was sentenced late last week to 2 1/2 years in federal prison after pleading guilty earlier this year to charges of access device fraud, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Stephanie Fahlgren, 33, of Sacramento accessed the database of a national life insurance company and obtained the personal and financial information of more than 114 individuals. Using the stolen information, Fahlgren opened lines of credit and credit cards in victims' names and made purchases without their consent. Another court appearance is scheduled for July 29, when a judge will determine the amount of restitution owed to the victims. — AM
 

Judge halts fraud racket that went undetected for years

Dan Kaplan June 28, 2010

A federal judge in Illinois has ordered the shutdown of a well-orchestrated operation that made fraudulent credit and debit card charges — often for as little as 20 cents at a time — to dupe victims out of millions of dollars.
 

New fraud service serves as repository for stolen data

Dan Kaplan June 17, 2010

Microsoft has joined forces with the National Cyber Forensics Training Alliance (NCFTA) to launch a portal designed to immediately alert companies if credentials or credit card numbers belonging to their customers or employees have been discovered online.
 

Police bust massive global credit card fraud ring

Angela Moscaritolo June 16, 2010

Police in 12 countries have arrested 178 individuals linked to an international credit card fraud ring. Eight of alleged members were nabbed in the United States
 

Masterminds of far-reaching scareware scam charged

Dan Kaplan May 28, 2010

A trio of men have been indicted for their alleged role in a highly profitable, Ukraine-based "scareware" scheme that tricked unwitting users into purchasing more than one million fake anti-virus programs, resulting in an estimated $100 million in losses to victims.