Tag Archives: Heartland Payment Systems

Indictment, Lawsuits Revive Trump-Alfa Bank Story

September 23, 2021

In October 2016, media outlets reported that data collected by some of the world’s most renowned cybersecurity experts had identified frequent and unexplained communications between an email server used by the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s largest financial institutions. Those publications set off speculation about a possible secret back-channel of communications, as well as a series of lawsuits and investigations that culminated last week with the indictment of the same former federal cybercrime prosecutor who brought the data to the attention of the FBI five years ago.

The Long Tail of ColdFusion Fail

March 17, 2014

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Earlier this month, I published a story about a criminal hacking gang using Adobe ColdFusion vulnerabilities to build a botnet of hacked e-commerce sites that were milked for customer credit card data. Today’s post examines the impact that this botnet has had on several businesses, as well as the important and costly lessons these companies learned from the intrusions.

Hacker Ring Stole 160 Million Credit Cards

July 25, 2013

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U.S. federal authorities have indicted five men — four Russians and a Ukrainian – for allegedly perpetrating many of the biggest cybercrimes of the past decade, including the theft of more than 160 million credit card numbers from major U.S. retailers, banks and card processors.

Are Megabreaches Out? E-Thefts Downsized in 2010

April 19, 2011

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The number of consumer and financial records compromised as a result of data breaches in 2010 fell dramatically compared to previous years, a shift that cybercrime investigators attribute to a sea-change in the motives and tactics used by criminals to steal information. At the same time, organizations are dealing with more breaches than ever before, and most data thefts continue to result from security weaknesses that are relatively unsophisticated and easy to prevent.