Showing posts sorted by relevance for query guilty plea. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query guilty plea. Sort by date Show all posts

LulzSec Hacker Cody Kretsinger Pleaded Guilty in Sony Breach

LulzSec Hacker Cody Kretsinger Pleaded Guilty in Sony Breach 

Accused LulzSec hacker Cody Kretsinger pleaded guilty on Thursday in federal court in California to taking part in an extensive computer breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Kretsinger, a 24-year-old who used the moniker "Recursion," pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer in a deal with prosecutors.
"I joined LulzSec, your honor, at which point we gained access to the Sony Pictures website," Kretsinger told the judge after entering his guilty plea. He testified that he gave the information he got from the Sony site to other members of LulzSec, who then posted it onto the group's website and on Twitter. Kretsinger flew from Decatur, Illinois, to Los Angeles for the hearing, and responded to the judge's questions calmly, with his hands clasped behind his back.
He and other LulzSec hackers, including those known as "Sabu" and "Topiary," stole the personal information of thousands of people after launching an "SQL injection" attack on the website, and ultimately caused Sony Pictures Entertainment more than $600,000 in damages, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Vandevelde said.The plea agreement is under seal, although Vandevelde said Kretsinger would likely receive substantially less than the 15-year maximum sentence he faces. He could also be forced to repay any damages. His sentencing is scheduled for July 26. Neither Kretsinger nor his lawyer would comment after the proceedings.


-Source (Yahoo News & Reuters)


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Stratfor Hacker Jeremy Hammond Sentenced to 120 Months in Prison

LulzSec Hacker Jeremy Hammond Sentenced to 120 Months in Prison For Stratfor Hack

Infamous hacker Jeremy Hammond convicted by the Judge for cyber-attacks on government agencies and businesses, including a global intelligence company. This 28 year old Chicago hacker who is also known as "Anarchaos" was arrested by the federal authorities and been charged for the  breach of the security analysis company Stratfor. In December last year the bail application of Hammond was also been rejected by the the U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska. On June this year Hammond pleaded guilty for his sin. In his statement he said "I have pleaded guilty, it is a relief to be able to say that I did work with Anonymous to hack Stratfor, among other websites." 
That guilty plea indeed worked out for him, as that time it was predicated that Hammond  might have to face 30 years in prison, but on Friday Judge Loretta Preska sentenced Hammond to 120 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release for illegally accessing computers systems of law enforcement agencies and government contractors. In an emotional proceeding that lasted more than 2 hours in a Manhattan federal court room on Friday, victims and relatives of Hammond railed against the FBI and shed tears on his behalf following the sentencing. One overwrought person claiming to be a victim was forcibly escorted from the court by officers. But Hammond likely knew the sentence was coming, his lawyer said. "When Jeremy took this plea with a 10-year maximum, I think he understood this was very likely the outcome," said Sarah Kunstler, Hammond's defense attorney outside of court house.
Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska said Hammond's digital handiwork had compromised thousands of people's personal and financial data, including the unpublished phone numbers and addresses of law enforcement, who then received threats. Hammond tried unsuccessfully to argue that his actions were politically motivated, she said. Hammond pleaded guilty to a single charge with a 10-year maximum sentence. Still his lawyers are asking to reduce his punishment for a sentence of 20 months.
Hammond has been held without bail since his arrest in March on charges connected with last year's hacking of Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based international intelligence broker, by AntiSec, an offshoot of LulzSec, which is in turn an offshoot of the hacktivist collective AnonymousProsecutors say the hack of Austin, Texas-based Strategic Forecasting resulted in the theft of 60,000 credit-card numbers and records for 860,000 clients. The government alleges that he published some of that information online, and used some of the stolen credit card data to run up at least $700,000 in unauthorized charges. He is also accused of giving about five million internal emails to WikiLeaks, which were published under the name The Global Intelligence Files.


-Source (Fox News)



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Two Romanian Hackers Pleaded Guilty on Credit Card Hack & Faced 7 Years Imprisonment

Two Romanian Hackers Pleaded Guilty on Credit Card Hack & Faced 7 Years Imprisonment  

According to the U.S. Department of Justice two Romanian hacker- Iulian Dolan & Cezar Butu have pleaded guilty to participating in a US$10 million scheme to hack into the computers of hundreds of Subway restaurants in the U.S. and steal payment card data. Iulian Dolan, 28, of Craiova, Romania, pleaded guilty Monday to one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit access device fraud, and Cezar Butu, 27, of Ploiesti, Romania, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud, the DOJ confirmed. Dolan and Butu were two of four Romanians charged in December in U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire with hacking Subway point-of-sale computers. In his plea agreement, Dolan has agreed to be sentenced to seven years, and Butu has agreed to be sentenced to 21 months in prison. The two men, in their guilty pleas, acknowledged participating in a Romanian-based conspiracy, lasting from 2009 to 2011, to hack into hundreds of U.S. point-of-sale (POS) computers. Co-conspirator Adrian-Tiberiu Oprea is in U.S. custody and awaiting trial in New Hampshire. The group used stolen payment card data to make unauthorized charges or to transfer funds from the cardholders' accounts, the scheme involved more than 146,000 compromised payment cards and more than $10 million in losses.  
During the conspiracy, Dolan remotely scanned the Internet to identify vulnerable POS systems in the U.S. with certain remote desktop software applications (RDAs) installed on them. Using these RDAs, Dolan logged onto the targeted POS systems over the Internet. The systems were often password-protected and Dolan attempted to crack the passwords to gain administrative access. 
He then installed keystroke logging software onto the POS systems and recorded all of the data that was keyed into or swiped through the POS systems, including customers' payment card data. Thus Dolan managed to steal payment card data belonging to approximately 6,000 cardholders. Dolan received $5,000 to $7,500 in cash and personal property from Oprea for his efforts.
In his plea agreement, Butu said he repeatedly asked Oprea to provide him with stolen payment card data and that Oprea provided him with instructions for how to access the website where Oprea had stored a portion of the stolen payment card data. Butu later attempted to use the stolen payment card data to make unauthorized charges on, or transfers of funds from, the accounts. He also attempted to sell, or otherwise transfer, the stolen payment card data to other co-conspirators. Butu acquired stolen payment card data from Oprea belonging to approximately 140 cardholders
While talking about Romanian Hackers then one name definitely comes in mind and that is Razvan Manole Cernaianu aka "TinKode" who get busted earlier in this year, on charges of hacking into Pentagon and NASA servers, stealing confidential data. Also last year another 26 year aged Romanian hacker faced imprisonment for hacking into NASA servers. 


-Source (CSO)





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60 Years Imprisonment For Hacker Who Leaked Scarlett Johansson Nude Photo

60 Years Imprisonment For Hacker Who Leaked Scarlett Johansson Nude Photo 
 
A 35 year aged Florida man charged with hacking into the email accounts of celebrities including Scarlett Johansson and Mila Kunis is facing up to 60 years in prison after agreeing to plead guilty to the felony counts. Christopher Chaney,  was taken into custody in October and charged with 25 counts of identity theft before being released on bail. He denied the accusations and entered a not guilty plea, but new documents filed in court on Thursday show Chaney is now set to confess to nine felonies, including unauthorized access to a computer and wiretapping for crimes committed between November, 2010 and his arrest. He is expected to officially change his plea to guilty in court on Monday. Few days ago famous singer Teyana Taylor twitter account get hacked and also few topless get exposed.




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Hollywood Celebrities Nude Photo Hacker Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison

Hollywood Celebrities Nude Photo Hacker Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison 

Photo hacking case of Hollywood celebrities takes another direction, as Christopher Chaney, who pleaded guilty to hacking into the e-mail accounts of Scarlett Johansson and other celebrities including Mila Kunis, Christina Aguilera and few others, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison by the  federal judge in Los Angeles. Chaney was arrested last year as part of a year-long investigation  of FBI dubbed Operation Hackerazzi. At a hearing on Monday, U.S. District Court judge S. James Otero said that Chaney's conduct demonstrated a "callous disregard to the victims," some 50 in total, including two non-celebrities who the judge noted was stalked by Chaney for more than 10 years. The prison term was accompanied by an order to pay $66,179 in restitution. Chaney pleaded guilty to nine offences, including illegal wire-tapping and unauthorized access to computers. In his guilty plea, Chaney admitted to having repeatedly hacked email accounts over a period of at least eleven months. He hacked into email accounts by taking advantage of the "forgotten password" feature on web interfaces and using publicly available information to answer security questions. 
Chaney admitted that as his hacking scheme became more extensive, he began using a proxy service called “Hide My IP” because he wanted to “cover his tracks” and not be discovered by law enforcement agents. Even after his home computers were seized by law enforcement, Chaney used another computer to hack into another victim’s e-mail account. As a result of his hacking scheme, Chaney obtained private photographs and confidential documents, including business contracts, scripts, letters, driver’s license information, and Social Security information. On several occasions, after hacking into victims’ accounts, Chaney sent e-mails from the hacked accounts, fraudulently posing as the victims and requesting more private photographs. Chaney e-mailed many of the stolen photographs to others, including another hacker and two gossip websites. As a result, some of the stolen photographs were posted on the Internet.
"I don't know what else to say other than I'm sorry," Chaney said. "I could be sentenced to never use a computer again and I wouldn't care." For detailed information about this case click here.







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Jeremy Hammond -Key Member of Anonymous Affiliated LulzSec Pleads Guilty To Stratfor Hack

Jeremy Hammond -Key Member of Anonymous Affiliated LulzSec Pleads Guilty To Stratfor Hack, Could Face 10 Years In Prison

Lulz Security widely known as LulzSec, the most dangerous hacker collective group who set their devastating hacking rampage for fifty days in which they have successfully penetrated almost all the so called top secure fields; has suddenly stopped their sail. But stopping crime never means that the criminal will be overlooked, the pending punishment will surely take place. And this applied from LulzSec also. Lat year we have seen leader of LulzSec and also also leader of infamous hacker collective group Anonymous code-named "Sabu," whose real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur, turned traitor to his community and became FBI informer and provided all the information on fellow hackers. The arrest of Sabu subsequently helped law-enforcement officials to infiltrate Lulzsec, an offshoot of Anonymous, the loose hacking collective that has supported an ever-shifting variety of causes. The information provided by Sabu lead FBI to arrest all the key members of LulzSec including Ryan ClearyJake Davis, Raynaldo RiveraCody Kretsinger and so on. Among them there was Jeremy Hammond widely known as "Anarchaos" who was arrested by the federal authorities and been charged for the  breach of the security analysis company Stratfor. In December last year the bail application of Hammond was also been rejected by the the Court. So after several hearings finally the accused of security breach against global intelligence firm Stratfor,  Jeremy Hammond pleaded guilty in a Manhattan court to one count of computer fraud and abuse in response to charges that he hacked into the network of the privacy intelligence firm Stratfor, stealing millions of emails that eventually were given to WikiLeaks and published over the course of 2012. The plea agreement could carry a sentence of as much as 10 years in prison, as well as millions of dollars in restitution payments, though Hammond’s official sentence won’t be handed down until September. Hammond also told Judge Loretta A. Preska of Federal District Court in Manhattan that in 2011 and 2012 he had gained unauthorized access to Stratfor’s computer systems and several other groups, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Virtual Academy, the public safety department in Arizona, and Vanguard Defense Industries, which makes drones. 
"Now that I have pleaded guilty, it is a relief to be able to say that I did work with Anonymous to hack Stratfor, among other websites," Hammond said in a statement on last Tuesday. 
A petition posted to Change.org by Hammond’s brother Jason Hammond asks the judge in Hammond’s case, Loretta Preska, to sentence him to time served, given that he’s already spent 15 months in lockup. “Jeremy did nothing for personal gain and everything in hopes of making the world a better place,” reads Hammond’s brother’s petition. “Jeremy is facing a maximum sentence of ten years, but the minimum is zero. He has been in jail since March 2012 awaiting trial and now sentencing. It’s time for him to come home.”


-Source (Forbes & Huffington Post)





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'PayPal 14' Culprits Enter Guilty Pleading Over Pro-WikiLeaks DDoS Attack Versus PayPal

Accused 'PayPal 14' Culprits of Anonymous Enter Guilty Pleading Over Pro-WikiLeaks DDoS Attack Versus PayPal

I am quite sure that all of your regular readers still remember the devastating cyber attack from Anonymous against PayPal, the attack was conducted under the banner of Operation PayPal (#OpPayPal). The infamous hacker community stated a reason for this mass protest as the online payment company suspending the account of WikiLeaks. #OpPayPal is considered as one of the most demolishing cyber attack ever taken in cyber space. PayPal with law enforcement agencies immediately taken steps and start investigation, in the primary step PayPal sent 1000 IP address of Anonymous hacker who was linked on that attack to FBI. As expected the hackers who were behind that attack was serially busted by the police. And finally the accused anonymous hacker appeared in federal court in California on Thursday and will be formally sentenced in one year. Eleven of the so-called “PayPal 14” members each pleaded guilty in court to one felony count of conspiracy and one misdemeanor count of damaging a computer as a result of their involvement in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack waged by Anonymous in late 2010 shortly after PayPal stopped processing donations to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. Prosecutors say the defendants used a free computer program called the Low Ion Orbit Cannon, aka LOIC, to collectively flood PayPal’s servers with tremendous amounts of illegitimate internet traffic for one week that winter, at moments knocking the website offline as a result and causing what PayPal estimated to be roughly £3.5 million in damages
Pending good behavior, those 11 alleged Anons will be back in court early next December for sentencing, atpleading guilty to the misdemeanor counts only, likely removing themselves from any lingering felony convictions but earning an eventual 90 day jail stint when they are finally sentenced. A fourth defendant, Dennis Owen Collins, did not attend the hearing due to complications involving a similar case currently being considered by a federal judge in Alexandria Virginia in which he and one dozen others are accused of conspiring to cripple other websites as an act of protest during roughly the same time.
which point the felony charges are expected to be adjourned. Two of the remaining defendants cut deals that found them. In his press reaction defense attorney Stanley Cohen said the terms of the settlement were reached following over a year of negotiations, “based upon strength, not weakness; based upon principle, not acquiescence.” In the courtroom all the accused hacker stood up and said, ‘We did what you said we did . . .We believe it was an appropriate act from us and we’re willing to pay the price.’ 
On the other hand Cohen, who represented PayPal 14 defendant Mercedes Haefer in court, said one of the hacktivists told him after Thursdays hearing concluded that "This misdemeanor is a badge of honor and courage." When media questioned Michael Whelan, a lawyer for one of the defendants, he declined to comment on the plea. 


-Source (RT)

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Hacker Sentenced to 30 Months in Prison for Selling Access to Botnets & Infecting 72,000 PCs


Hacker Sentenced to 30 Months in Prison for Selling Access to Botnets & Infecting 72,000 PCs


A 30-year old computer hacker received a thirty month in prison sentence for creating a botnet and a charge of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. According to Depertment of Justice - Joshua Schichtel, of Phoenix, was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for selling command-and-control access to and use of thousands of malware-infected computers, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald C. Machen Jr.
Schichtel was sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in the District of Columbia.  In addition to his prison term, Schichtel was ordered to serve three years of supervised release. 
Schichtel entered a guilty plea on Aug. 17, 2011, to one count of attempting to cause damage to multiple computers without authorization by the transmission of programs, codes or commands, a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
According to court documents, Schichtel sold access to “botnets,” which are networks of computers that have been infected with a malicious computer program that allows unauthorized users to control infected computers.  Individuals who wanted to infect computers with various different types of malicious software (malware) would contact Schichtel and pay him to install, or have installed, malware on the computers that comprised those botnets.  Specifically, Schichtel pleaded guilty to causing software to be installed on approximately 72,000 computers on behalf of a customer who paid him $1,500 for use of the botnet.

This case was investigated by the Washington Field Office of the FBI.  The case is being prosecuted by Corbin Weiss, Senior Counsel in the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.




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27 Years Old Hacker From Washington Fined & Jailed For Hacking Several Facebook Accounts & Pages

27 Years Old Hacker (Timothy Noirjean) From Washington Fined & Jailed For Hacking Several Facebook Accounts & Pages

Washington County district court judge sentenced Woodbury resident Timothy Noirjean to 150 days in jail, five years on probation and more than $15,000 in fines.
27 year old Noirjean pleaded guilty to 13 counts of electronic identity theft. He was accused of posing as a Facebook friend to an Oakdale woman and hacking her information – and information belonging to her friends. Washington County Attorney Pete Orput said his prosecutors never budged from his assertion in 2011 that the case would not be plea-bargained. “I’m not willing to tell one or several (of the victims) that we dismissed one or several of the counts in return for guilty pleas for the others,” Orput said.
He said he was committed to getting convictions on the 13 counts – all felonies – due to the harm caused by Noirjean’s actions. After hacking the women’s information, Noirjean posted photos of several of the women on an adult website.
Orput said that while his office could prosecute Noirjean, it couldn’t legally make the website take down the photos. “That harm goes on forever,” he said.
Orput said Internet users must be critical when it comes to sharing information, adding that identity theft has emerged as perhaps the most common crime in Washington County. “This case illustrates the need to be very, very safe and vigilant online,” he said. “I hope people just won’t share passwords with anybody.”
According to a criminal complaint, the woman reported having a Facebook chat with someone she thought was a friend. When the woman logged off Facebook, then attempted to log back in, she learned her password had been changed.
After gaining access to her Facebook page, she found a link on her page that appeared to have been posted by the friend she had been chatting with earlier. That link led to a sexually explicit website that contained three of the woman’s photos and identified her by first and last name and city of residence. Those photos had been stored in her email account, according to the complaint.
The woman then realized that she had unwittingly disclosed account information to her chat correspondent, later identified as Noirjean. The friend Noirjean had been posing as also learned her account information had been hacked.
Police closed in on Noirjean using Internet records. In an interview with police, Noirjean admitted to hacking into or attempting to hack more than 100 accounts. More victims were discovered after a search of Noirjean’s computer.
As part of the sentence, Tenth District Court Judge Elizabeth Martin ordered Noirjean to pay $1,000 to each of the 13 victims. She also required him to pay more than $2,000 to two women to cover computer expenses.


-Source (Woodbury Bulletin)




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LulzSec Hacker Cody Kretsinger Sentenced 1 Year Imprisonment For Sony Breach

LulzSec Hacker Cody Kretsinger Sentenced 1 Year Imprisonment For Security Breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment  

Infamous LulzSec hacker Cody Kretsinger who pleaded guilty last year in front of Federal Court of California for taking part in an extensive computer breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment server has faced judgement. 25 year aged Kretsinger who is also known as "Recursion" was one of the key member of Lulz Security, widely known to us as LulzSec, an offshoot of the international hacking group Anonymous. According to federal prosecutors, Cody Kretsinger has been sentenced to one year in prison in  Los Angeles. This court rule has been followed by home detention. Kretsinger, was also been ordered by a U.S. district judge in Los Angeles to perform 1,000 hours of community service after his release from prison, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. Although prosecutors refused to say whether the hacker was co-operating with authorities in return for a softer sentence. 
During last year's plea hearing, Kretsinger told a federal judge that he gained access to the Sony Pictures website and gave the information he found there to other members of LulzSec, who posted it on the group's website and Twitter. "I joined LulzSec, your honor, at which point we gained access to the Sony Pictures website," said Kretsinger in the federal court. Prosecutors said Kretsinger and other LulzSec hackers, including those known as "Sabu" and "Topiary," stole the personal information of thousands of people after launching an "SQL injection" attack on the website; ultimately caused the unit of Sony Corp more than $600,000 in finical damage, along with that the attack caused bad impact and loss of faith for Sony Corporation and it's customers across the globe. 
While talking about this story, we would like to recap the decent history - where the arrest followed by guilty pleading of all the key members of LulzSec including  Ryan Cleary, Jake DavisJeremy HammondRaynaldo RiveraCody Kretsinger came a month after court documents revealed that Anonymous leader "Sabu," whose real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur, turned traitor to his community and became FBI informer and provided all the information on fellow hackers.


-Source (Reuters & Yahoo) 





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Teen Hacker "Cosmo the God" of Underground Nazi Sentenced 6 Yrs Internet Ban By California Court

Teen Hacker "Cosmo the God" of Underground Nazi Sentenced 6 Yrs Internet Ban By California Court

A teenager hacker from an infamous hacker collective group named Underground Nazi faced Internet ban. On Wednesday the 15 years old hacker known as "Cosmo" or "Cosmo the God" was sentenced in juvenile court in Long Beach, California. According to sources, Cosmo pleaded guilty to multiple felonies in exchange for a probation, encompassing all the charges brought against him, which included charges based on credit card fraud, identity theft, bomb threats, and online impersonation. 
This newly formed hacker group Underground Nazi had taken the spot light in January this year, when they hacked UFC.com (Ultimate Fighting Championship). Later they involved them selves in mass protest against controversial privacy act SOPA & PIPA. The protest was dubbed Operation Megaupload (#OpMegaupload), where hacktivist Anonymous  along with hackers around the globe stand together against the take down of Megaupload.com. In the middle of 2012 Cosmo was also responsible for Twitter outage, where Cosmo along with few other UG Nazi members performed massive denial of service attack to interrupt the service of Twitter. Also it has been found that, Cosmo pioneered social-engineering techniques that allowed him to gain access to user accounts at Amazon, PayPal, and a slew of other companies. He was arrested in June during a part of a multi-state FBI sting. 
Representatives from both the Long Beach district attorney and public defenders offices refused to comment on the case, given Cosmo’s status as a juvenile. However, according to Cosmo, the terms of the plea place him on probation until his 21st birthday. During that time, he cannot use the internet without prior consent from his parole officer. Nor will he be allowed to use the Internet in an unsupervised manner, or for any purposes other than education-related ones. He is required to hand over all of his account logins and passwords. He must disclose in writing any devices that he has access to that have the capability to connect to a network. He is prohibited from having contact with any members or associates of UG Nazi or Anonymous, along with a specified list of other individuals. He had to forfeit all the computers and other items seized in the raid on his home. Also, according to Cosmo, violating any of these terms will result in a three-year prison term. The probationary period lasting until age 21 is standard, but other terms were more surprising.



-Source (Wired) 









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