Tag Archives: wired.com

A Busy Week for Cybercrime Justice

March 26, 2012
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Last week was a bad one to be a cybercrook. Authorities in Russia arrested several men thought to be behind the Carberp banking Trojan, and obtained a verdict of guilty against the infamous spammer Leo Kuvayev. In the United States, a jury returned a 33-month jail sentence against a Belarusian who ran a call service for cyber thieves. At the same time, U.S. prosecutors secured a guilty plea against a Russian man who was part of a gang that stole more than $3 million from U.S. businesses fleeced with the help of the ZeuS Trojan.

U.S. Government Takes Down Coreflood Botnet

April 14, 2011
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The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI this week were granted unprecedented authortiy to seize control over a criminal botnet that enslaved millions of computers and to use that control to disable the malicious software on infected PCs.

The target of the takedown was “Coreflood,” an infamous botnet that first emerged almost a decade ago as a high-powered virtual weapon designed to knock targeted Web sites offline. Over the years, the crooks running the botnet began using it to defraud owners of the victim PCs by stealing bank account information and draining balances.

Hacked Companies Hit by the Obvious in 2009

July 28, 2010
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As a rule, I tend to avoid writing about reports and studies unless they offer truly valuable and actionable insights: Too often, reports have preconceived findings and that merely serve to increase hype and drum up business for the companies that commission them. But I always make an exception for the annual data breach report issued by the Verizon Business RISK team, which is so chock full of hype-slaying useful data and conclusions that it is often hard to know what not to write about from the report.