FSB

January 28, 2017

A Shakeup in Russia’s Top Cybercrime Unit

This post was originally published on this siteA chief criticism I heard from readers of my book, Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime, was that it dealt primarily with petty crooks involved in petty crimes, while ignoring more substantive security issues like government surveillance and cyber war. But now it appears that the chief antagonist of Spam Nation is at the dead center of an international scandal involving the hacking of U.S. state electoral boards in Arizona and Illinois, the sacking of Russia’s top cybercrime investigators, and the slow but steady leak of unflattering data on some of Russia’s most powerful politicians. […]
April 24, 2017

The Backstory Behind Carder Kingpin Roman Seleznev’s Record 27 Year Prison Sentence

This post was originally published on this siteRoman Seleznev, a 32-year-old Russian cybercriminal and prolific credit card thief, was sentenced Friday to 27 years in federal prison. That is a record punishment for hacking violations in the United States and by all accounts one designed to send a message to criminal hackers everywhere. But a close review of the case suggests that Seleznev’s record sentence was severe in large part because the evidence against him was substantial and yet he declined to cooperate with prosecutors prior to his trial. The Maldives is a South Asian island country, located in the Indian Ocean, […]
March 26, 2020

Russians Shut Down Huge Card Fraud Ring

This post was originally published on this siteFederal investigators in Russia have charged at least 25 people accused of operating a sprawling international credit card theft ring. Cybersecurity experts say the raid included the charging of a major carding kingpin thought to be tied to dozens of carding shops and to some of the bigger data breaches targeting western retailers over the past decade. In a statement released this week, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said 25 individuals were charged with circulating illegal means of payment in connection with some 90 websites that sold stolen credit card data. A […]
December 18, 2020

VMware Flaw a Vector in SolarWinds Breach?

This post was originally published on this siteU.S. government cybersecurity agencies warned this week that the attackers behind the widespread hacking spree stemming from the compromise at network software firm SolarWinds used weaknesses in other, non-SolarWinds products to attack high-value targets. According to sources, among those was a flaw in software virtualization platform VMware, which the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) warned on Dec. 7 was being used by Russian hackers to impersonate authorized users on victim networks. On Dec. 7, 2020, the NSA said “Russian state-sponsored malicious cyber actors are exploiting a vulnerability in VMware Access and VMware Identity […]