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October 3, 2017

Fear Not: You, Too, Are a Cybercrime Victim!

This post was originally published on this siteMaybe you’ve been feeling left out because you weren’t among the lucky few hundred million or billion who had their personal information stolen in either the Equifax or Yahoo! breaches. Well buck up, camper: Both companies took steps to make you feel better today. Yahoo! announced that, our bad!: It wasn’t just one billion users who had their account information filched in its record-breaking 2013 data breach. It was more like three billion (read: all) users. Meanwhile, big three credit bureau Equifax added 2.5 million more victims to its roster of 143 million Americans […]
February 5, 2018

Alleged Spam Kingpin ‘Severa’ Extradited to US

This post was originally published on this sitePeter Yuryevich Levashov, a 37-year-old Russian computer programmer thought to be one of the world’s most notorious spam kingpins, has been extradited to the United States to face federal hacking and spamming charges. Levashov, in an undated photo. Levashov, who allegedly went by the hacker names “Peter Severa,” and “Peter of the North,” hails from St. Petersburg in northern Russia, but he was arrested last year while in Barcelona, Spain with his family. Authorities have long suspected he is the cybercriminal behind the once powerful spam botnet known as Waledac (a.k.a. “Kelihos”), a now-defunct […]
October 2, 2018

When Security Researchers Pose as Cybercrooks, Who Can Tell the Difference?

This post was originally published on this siteA ridiculous number of companies are exposing some or all of their proprietary and customer data by putting it in the cloud without any kind of authentication needed to read, alter or destroy it. When cybercriminals are the first to discover these missteps, usually the outcome is a demand for money in return for the stolen data. But when these screw-ups are unearthed by security professionals seeking to make a name for themselves, the resulting publicity often can leave the breached organization wishing they’d instead been quietly extorted by anonymous crooks. Last week, […]
March 22, 2019

Alleged Child Porn Lord Faces US Extradition

This post was originally published on this siteIn 2013, the FBI exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Firefox to seize control over a Dark Web network of child pornography sites. The alleged owner of that ring – 33-year-old Freedom Hosting operator Eric Eoin Marques – was arrested in Ireland later that year on a U.S. warrant and has been in custody ever since. This week, Ireland’s Supreme Court cleared the way for Marques to be extradited to the United States. Eric Eoin Marques. Photo: Irishtimes.com The FBI has called Marques the world’s largest facilitator of child porn. He is wanted on four […]