Organized cyber thieves took roughly $600,000 from the coastal city of Brigantine, New Jersey this week after stealing the city’s online banking credentials. The break-in marks the second time this year that hackers have robbed the coffers of an Atlantic County town: In March, a similar attack struck Egg Harbor Township, N.J., which lost $100,000 in a similar intrusion.
Authorities in Ukraine this week detained five individuals believed to be the masterminds behind sophisticated cyber thefts that stole $70 million – out of an attempted $220 million — from hundreds of U.S.-based small to mid-sized businesses over the last several years, the FBI said Friday.
Troy Owen never thought he’d see the day when the cyber thieves who robbed his company of $800,000 would ever be charged with any crime. Owens said that investigators told him that the perpetrators were mostly overseas in places like Ukraine and Moldova, and that it might be tough to catch those responsible.
But on Thursday afternoon, authorities in New York announced they had charged more than 60 individuals — and arrested 20 — in connection with international cyber heists perpetrated against dozens of companies in the United States, including Owen’s.
Authorities in the United Kingdom on Wednesday charged 11 individuals with running an international cyber crime syndicate that laundered millions of dollars stolen from consumers and businesses with the help of the help of the ultra-sophisticated ZeuS banking Trojan.
Authorities in the United Kingdom on Tuesday arrested 19 Eastern Europeans alleged to be connected to a massive fraud ring that has stolen tens of millions of dollars from hundreds of consumers and small to mid-sized businesses in the U.K. and the United States.
A major new malware spam campaign mimicking invites sent via business networking site LinkedIn.com leverages user trust and a kitchen sink of browser exploits in a bid to install the password-stealing ZeuS Trojan.
Spamit, a closely guarded affiliate program that for years has paid some of the world’s top spammers to promote counterfeit pharmacy Web sites, now says that it will close up shop at the end of September.
When you’re shopping for stolen credit and debit cards online, there are so many choices these days. A glut of stolen data — combined with innovation and cutthroat competition among vendors — is conspiring to keep prices for stolen account numbers exceptionally low. Even so, many readers probably have no idea that their credit card information is worth only about $1.50 on the black market.
Several new Internet worms are spreading quite rapidly via a newly-found vulnerability in Twitter.com. While the flaw that powers these attackers will most likely be sewn shut in a matter of hours, if you’re going to frequent Twitter today you’d be wise to use a Twitter client or at least block Javascript on the site, as these worms appear to be spreading with little to no interaction on the part of users.
Adobe Systems Inc. today rushed out a software update to remedy a dangerous security hole in its ubiquitous Flash Player browser plugin that hackers have been exploiting to break into vulnerable systems.
