U.S. Charged 2 Iranian Hackers for Threatening Voters During 2020 Presidential Election

The U.S. government on Thursday unsealed an indictment that accused two Iranian nationals of their involvement in cyber-enabled disinformation and threat campaign orchestrated to interfere in the 2020 presidential elections by gaining access to confidential voter information from at least one sta...

British Court Rejects U.S. Request to Extradite WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

A British court has rejected the U.S. government's request to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the country on charges pertaining to illegally obtaining and sharing classified material related to national security. In a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court today, Judge Vanessa...

Austin Man Indicted for Stealing Unreleased Music from Artists

A 27-year-old man who allegedly impersonated a music producer in an effort to nab unreleased music from various artists has been indicted. If convicted, he faces 27 years in prison on charges of conspiring with others to commit wire fraud, computer intrusion and committing aggravated identity...

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Sentenced to 50 Weeks in UK Jail

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been sentenced to 50 weeks—for almost a year—in prison by a London court for breaching his bail conditions in 2012 and taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy for nearly 7 years. The 47-year-old Assange was arrested last month by London's Metropolitan Police...

Alleged Russian Hacker Pleads Not Guilty After Extradition to United States

A Russian hacker indicted by a United States court for his involvement in online ad fraud schemes that defrauded multiple American companies out of tens of millions of dollars pleaded not guilty on Friday in a courtroom in Brooklyn, New York. Aleksandr Zhukov, 38, was arrested in November last ye...

FBI Takes Down a Massive Advertising Fraud Ring

The FBI announced that it dismantled a large Internet advertising fraud network, and arrested eight people: A 13-count indictment was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging Aleksandr Zhukov, Boris Timokhin, Mikhail Andreev, Denis Avdeev, Dmitry Novikov, Sergey Ovsyannikov, Aleksandr...

FBI Sinkholes $38M Global Ad Fraud Operation

The FBI has taken control of 31 web domains in a widespread takedown of a multi-year, global ad fraud campaign, believed to have stolen at least $38 million, partly via a botnet strategy. In addition, eight defendants face a 13-count indictment from a federal court in Brooklyn in the case. The...

LuminosityLink Hacking Tool Author Gets 30-Months Prison Sentence

A 21-year-old Kentucky man who previously pleaded guilty to developing, marketing, and selling an infamous remote access trojan RAT called LuminosityLink has now been sentenced to 30 months in prison. According to a press release published Monday by U.S. Attorney's Office, Colton Grubbs, who used...

Operator of VirusTotal Like Malware-Scanning Service Jailed for 14 Years

A Latvian hacker behind the development and operation of counter antivirus service "Scan4You" has finally been sentenced to 14 years in prison. 37-year-old Ruslans Bondars, described as a Latvian "non-citizen" or "citizen of the former USSR who had been residing in Riga, Latvia," was found guilty...

IC3 Warns of Business Email Compromise Scams

The Internet Crime Complaint Center IC3 has released an alert on business email compromise scams. This type of scam targets businesses and individuals by using social engineering or computer intrusion to compromise legitimate email accounts and conduct unauthorized fund transfers or obtain...

Man Who Hacked Jail Systems to Release His Friend Early Gets 7-Years in Prison

Remember a young hacker who hacked jail systems in an attempt to release his prison inmate early? Well, that hacker will now be joining his inmate behind bars. Konrads Voits of Ypsilanti, Michigan, has been sentenced to seven years and three months in prison for attempting to hack the Washtenaw...

Russian Hacker Who Allegedly Hacked LinkedIn and Dropbox Extradited to US

A Russian man accused of hacking LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Formspring in 2012 and possibly compromising personal details of over 100 million users, has pleaded not guilty in a U.S. federal court after being extradited from the Czech Republic. Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin, 30, of Moscow was arrest...

Young Hacker, Who Took Over Jail Network to Get Friend Released Early, Faces Prison

Well, "a friend in need is a friend indeed" goes a long way, but in this case, this phrase hardly makes any sense. A 27-year-old Michigan man who hacked into the government computer system of Washtenaw County Jail to alter inmate records and gain early release for his friend is now himself facing...

Russian Hacker Behind LinkedIn Breach also Charged with Hacking Dropbox and Formspring

The alleged Russian hacker, who was arrested by the FBI in collaboration with the Czech police, was believed to be the one responsible for massive 2012 data breach at LinkedIn, according to a statement released by LinkedIn. Now, United States authorities have officially indicted Yevgeniy...

Experts Question Legality of Use of Regin Malware by Intel Agencies

The disclosure of the Regin APT malware campaign this week has spurred much speculation about the source of the attack, with many experts pointing the finger at either the NSA or GCHQ, the British spy agency. Though security researchers involved in uncovering the attack have remained mum on the...

Three Charged with Creating, Distributing Gozi Banking Malware

Charges will be brought today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against three men allegedly involved with creating and distributing the Gozi banking Trojan. Gozi infected more than a million computers worldwide, including a handful at NASA, leading to tens of millio...

Australian Police Arrest Man for Hacking Nearly 100 Online Accounts

The Australian police have arrested a 33-year-old man accused of hacking into nearly 100 online accounts. The Australian Federal Police's high-tech crime unit has been monitoring the suspect since last September. This surveillance began when a local telecom company alerted the authorities to...

Update Protections against Recent Malware Threats (09-Jan-08)

Malware is a software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent. It is a general name for a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying programs like Viruses, worms, Adware, Trojans, and spyware that exploit unprotected clients, using network...