‘Scattered Spider’ Member ‘Tylerb’ Pleads Guilty

A 24-year-old British national and senior member of the cybercrime group "Scattered Spider " has pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. Tyler Robert Buchanan admitted his role in a series of text-message phishing attacks in the summer of 2022 that allowed the group...

Five Plead Guilty in U.S. for Helping North Korean IT Workers Infiltrate 136 Companies

The U.S. Department of Justice DoJ on Friday announced that five individuals have pleaded guilty to assisting North Korea's illicit revenue generation schemes by enabling information technology IT worker fraud in violation of international sanctions. The five individuals are listed below - Audric...

SIM-Swapper, Scattered Spider Hacker Gets 10 Years

A 20-year-old Florida man at the center of a prolific cybercrime group known as "Scattered Spider " was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison today, and ordered to pay roughly $13 million in restitution to victims. Noah Michael Urban of Palm Coast, Fla. pleaded guilty in April 2025 to charges o...

Dating app scammer cons former US army colonel into leaking national secrets

Even hard-headed military types can fall victim to romance scams, it seems. A former US army colonel faces up to ten years in prison after revealing national secrets on a foreign dating app. David Slater was a retired colonel in the US army who took up work as a civilian at US Strategic Command,...

Metadata Shows the FBI’s ‘Raw’ Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Was Likely Modified

There is no evidence the footage was deceptively manipulated, but ambiguities around how the video was processed may further fuel conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death...

Iranian Hacker Pleads Guilty in $19 Million Robbinhood Ransomware Attack on Baltimore

An Iranian national has pleaded guilty in the U.S. over his involvement in an international ransomware and extortion scheme involving the Robbinhood ransomware. Sina Gholinejad aka Sina Ghaaf, 37, and his co-conspirators are said to have breached the computer networks of various organizations in...

DoJ Indicts 5 Individuals for $866K North Korean IT Worker Scheme Violations

The U.S. Department of Justice DoJ on Thursday indicted two North Korean nationals, a Mexican national, and two of its own citizens for their alleged involvement in the ongoing fraudulent information technology IT worker scheme that seeks to generate revenue for the Democratic People's Republic o...

The New Jersey Drone Mystery May Not Actually Be That Mysterious

A flurry of drone sightings across New Jersey and New York has sparked national intrigue and US government responses. But experts are pouring cold water on America’s hottest new conspiracy theory...

Feds Charge Five Men in ‘Scattered Spider’ Roundup

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles this week unsealed criminal charges against five men alleged to be members of a hacking group responsible for dozens of cyber intrusions at major U.S. technology companies between 2021 and 2023, including LastPass , MailChimp , Okta , T-Mobile and Twilio. A visu...

Indian National Pleads Guilty to $37 Million Cryptocurrency Theft Scheme

An Indian national has pleaded guilty in the U.S. over charges of stealing more than $37 million by setting up a website that impersonated the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange platform. Chirag Tomar, 30, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in pris...

Ukrainian REvil Hacker Sentenced to 13 Years and Ordered to Pay $16 Million

A Ukrainian national has been sentenced to more than 13 years in prison and ordered to pay $16 million in restitution for carrying out thousands of ransomware attacks and extorting victims. Yaroslav Vasinskyi aka Rabotnik, 24, along with his co-conspirators part of the REvil ransomware group...

AI and the Evolution of Social Media

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. A decade ago, social media was celebrated for sparking democratic uprisings in the Arab world and beyond. Now front pages are splashed with stories of social platforms’ role in misinformation, business conspiracy, malfeasance, and risks to mental health. In a 2022...

Raccoon Infostealer operator extradited to the United States

A Ukrainian national, Mark Sokolovsky, has been indicted for crimes related to fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft and extradited to the United States from the Netherlands, the US Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Texas has announced. In March 2022, around the same ti...

BreachForums Founder Sentenced to 20 Years of Supervised Release, No Jail Time

Conor Brian Fitzpatrick has been sentenced to time served and 20 years of supervised release for his role as the creator and administrator of BreachForums. Fitzpatrick, who went by the online alias "pompompurin," was arrested in March 2023 in New York and was subsequently charged with conspiracy ...

Scammers Are Tricking Anti-Vaxxers Into Buying Bogus Medical Documents

On Telegram, scammers are impersonating doctors to sell fake Covid-19 vaccination certificates and other products, showing how criminals are taking advantage of conspiracy theories...

Elon Musk Is Giving QAnon Believers Hope Just in Time for the 2024 Elections

Musk’s recent use of the term “QAnon” is his most explicit endorsement of the movement to date. Conspiracists have since spent days dissecting its meaning and cheering on his apparent support...

Bounty to Recover NIST’s Elliptic Curve Seeds

This is a fun challenge: The NIST elliptic curves that power much of modern cryptography were generated in the late 90s by hashing seeds provided by the NSA. How were the seeds generated? Rumor has it that they are in turn hashes of English sentences, but the person who picked them, Dr. Jerry...

Announcing the $12k NIST Elliptic Curves Seeds Bounty

The NIST elliptic curves that power much of modern cryptography were generated in the late '90s by hashing seeds provided by the NSA. How were the seeds generated? Rumor has it that they are in turn hashes of English sentences, but the person who picked them, Dr. Jerry Solinas, passed away in ear...

Owner of BreachForums Pleads Guilty to Cybercrime and Child Pornography Charges

Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, the owner of the now-defunct BreachForums website, has pleaded guilty to charges related to his operation of the cybercrime forum as well as having child pornography images. The development, first reported by DataBreaches.net last week, comes nearly four months after...

UFO Whistleblower, Meet a Conspiracy-Loving Congress

Fresh claims from a former US intelligence officer about an “intact” alien craft may get traction on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers want to believe...