The FBI on Tuesday seized the website for DEER.IO, a Russian online platform used to conduct millions of dollars worth of cybercriminal transactions. The crackdown followed the March 7 arrest of alleged hacker/DEER.IO administrator Kirill Victorovich, who was taken into custody while in New York City. Active since October 2013, DEER.IO allows users to purchase…
A coalition of security-minded organizations led by Microsoft struck a major blow against the mighty Necurs botnet — one of the largest in world — dismantling its infrastructure in a global takedown. Empowered by a court order, Microsoft not only took control of the Necurs operators’ web domains, but it blocked an additional 6 million…
A Manhattan federal jury yesterday failed to reach a verdict on any major charges leveled against Joshua Schulte, a former CIA software engineer from Lubbock, Texas, who was accused of stealing the agency’s hacking tools and delivering them to WikiLeaks for publication. Schulte, 31, was convicted on contempt of court and making false statements, but…
The U.S. Department of Justice has charged four members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army with nine criminal counts, accusing them of orchestrating and carrying out the 2017 hack of credit reporting agency Equifax. An indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Atlanta and unveiled today by the DOJ alleges that Beijing residents Wu…
A California hacker pleaded guilty last Friday in federal court to one count of computer fraud and abuse, for stealing and leaking sensitive information related to the Nintendo Switch gaming console and various Nintendo game titles. Ryan Hernandez, 21, of Palmdale, Calif., also pleaded guilty to one charge of possess of children pornography. A Department…
Facebook has agreed to set aside $550 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by users who allege the social media company violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), attorneys for the plaintiffs announced on Wednesday. San Francisco Federal District Court Judge James Donato must still approve the settlement, which the lawyers claim is…
Several members of a group allegedly behind hundreds of Magecart-style attacks were arrested last month in Indonesia as the result of an international law enforcement operation. Interpol’s ASEAN Cyber Capability Desk and the Indonesian National Police just announced late last week the December 20, 2019 arrest of three members of a group allegedly behind a…
A three-year-old investigation and prosecution of cybercriminals aligned with the multinational GozNym network resulted last week in the sentencing of a Bulgaria resident in a Pittsburgh federal court. In a related action, a Tbilisi, Georgia court handed down prison sentences of seven and nine years to two Georgian members of the group, following a lengthy trial. In…
Nearly three years after attempting to extort either $100,000 in cryptocurrency or a thousand $100 iTunes gift cards from Apple, a British hacker was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court in London to a two-year suspended jail term, 300 hours of unpaid work and a six-month electronic curfew. Kerem Albayrak, 22, of North London, told Apple in…
An alleged British hacker pleaded not guilty in a U.S. federal court in St. Louis, Mo., to a charge that he conspired to steal sensitive PII with the intention to release those records on criminal marketplaces unless victims paid ransoms. Nathan Wyatt, 39, purportedly a member of the “Dark Overload” hacking group, was extradited from…
