Pirate Bay Co-Founder Svartholm Warg Accused For Hacking, Fraud & Attempt to Steal Money From Bank

Pirate Bay Co-Founder Svartholm Warg Accused For Hacking, Fraud & Attempt to Steal Money From Swedish Bank 

The Pirate Bay also known as TPB is the most infamous website providing torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer to peer file sharing. It is fact that many of us love the website, but it is also undeniable that if you are in the core team to run TPB then you are definitely sitting on the edge of legality. Many of you have already started terrifying! But I have the news which will not frighten you but surely will surely frighten Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, the co-founder of Pirate Bay. Gottfrid might get mercy if he could limited himself only into Pirate Bay, but in reality he did not and crossed all the lines. The 27-year-old’s Gottfrid widely known as 'Anakata' has been charged for hacking several Swedish companies and stealing their personal data. He and three others are also accused of attempting to make illegal online money transfers. Prosecutors claim Warg  along with three others—hacked IBM mainframes belonging to tax firm Logica and the bank to transfer money from various bank accounts. In total, the four men reportedly attempted to transfer just over US$900,000. Warg has also been accused of hacking into the databases of several Swedish businesses and the government’s federal taxing agency.

In his statement prosecutor Henrik Olin said - "A large amount of data from companies and agencies was taken during the hack, including a large amount of personal data, such as personal identity numbers (personnummer) of people with protected identities. I'd say that Svartholm Warg is the main person and brains behind the hacker attack. We've had a lot of theories but I can't find a motive in the evidence. What I can say is that we're talking about an incredibly technically advanced hack against a large server environment considered to have very high security and that can boost one's status in certain circles" 

Three other people have been indicted along with Svartholm Warg. They are all charged with serious fraud, attempted aggravated fraud, and aiding attempted aggravated fraud. According to the indictment, authorities seized a computer and chat transcripts of Svartholm Warg and the other suspects. Olin claims that it is the biggest investigation into a data intrusion ever conducted in the country. 

Here we want to remind you that Svartholm Warg, 27, was arrested in Cambodian and deported to Sweden in September last year due to an arrest warrant issued for him in relation to his conviction in the Pirate Bay trial. Since December, Svartholm Warg has been held in a prison in Mariefred in central Sweden where he is serving out a prison sentence related to his activities with The Pirate Bay.

-Source (The Local, RT)

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3 Russian Cyber Criminal Who Was The Master Mind of Banking Trojan 'Gozi' Charged in New York

3 Russian Cyber Criminal Who Was The Master Mind of Banking Trojan 'Gozi' Charged in New York 

Yet again another serious issue of cyber crime get resolved when the FBI tracked and figured out the master mind of infamous 'Gozi banking Trojan' which effected more than millions of system world wide, including a handful at NASA, leading to tens of millions of dollars in lost banking funds and damages to computer systems and networks. Three alleged international cyber criminals from Russia, responsible for creating and distributing 'Gozi' that infected over one million computers and caused tens of millions of dollars in losses charged in Manhattan Federal Court. Mihai Ionut Paunescu aged 28, a Romanian, Deniss Calovskis, 27, a Latvian, and Nikita Vladimirovich Kuzmin, 25, of the Russian Federation, are charged with computer intrusion, conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud and access device fraud. Federal authorities said the three were arrested last week; Kuzmin is being held in New York, while Paunescu is in custody in Romania and Calovskis in Latvia. 

According to the press release of FBI -Deniss Calovskis, a/k/a “Miami,” a Latvian national who allegedly wrote some of the computer code that made the Gozi virus so effective, was arrested in Latvia in November 2012. Mihai Ionut Paunescu, a/k/a “Virus,” a Romanian national who allegedly ran a “bulletproof hosting” service that enabled cyber criminals to distribute the Gozi virus, the Zeus trojan, and other notorious malware and to conduct other sophisticated cyber crimes, was arrested in Romania in December 2012. 

The cases are being handled by the Complex Frauds Unit of the United States Attorney’s Office. Assistant United States Attorneys Sarah Lai, Nicole Friedlander, and Thomas G.A. Brown, along with Trial Attorney Carol Sipperly of the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Department of Justice on the Paunescu case, are in charge of the prosecution. The charges contained in the Indictments are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Defendant	Age and Residence	Charges	Maximum Penalty
Nikita Kuzmin	25; Moscow, Russia	Conspiracy to commit bank fraud; bank fraud; conspiracy to commit access device fraud; access device fraud; conspiracy to commit computer intrusion; computer intrusion	95 years in prison
Deniss Calovskis	27; Riga, Latvia	Conspiracy to commit bank fraud; conspiracy to commit access device fraud; conspiracy to commit computer intrusion; conspiracy to commit wire fraud; conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft	67 years in prison
Mihai Ionut Paunescu	28; Bucharest, Romania	Conspiracy to commit computer intrusion; conspiracy to commit bank fraud; conspiracy to commit wire fraud	60 years in prison

Brief About Gozi:-
The Gozi virus is malicious computer code, or “malware,” that steals personal bank account information, including usernames and passwords, from the users of affected computers. It was named by private sector information security experts in the U.S. who, in 2007, discovered that previously unrecognized malware was stealing personal bank account information from computers across Europe on a vast scale, while remaining virtually undetectable in the computers it infected. To date, the Gozi virus has infected over one million victim computers worldwide, among them at least 40,000 computers in the U.S., including computers belonging to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as well as computers in Germany, Great Britain, Poland, France, Finland, Italy, Turkey, and elsewhere, and it has caused tens of millions of dollars in losses to the individuals, businesses, and government entities whose computers were infected.

The Gozi virus was distributed to victims’ computers in several different ways. In one method, the virus was disguised as an apparently benign .pdf document which, when opened, secretly installed the Gozi virus on the victim’s computer. Once installed, the Gozi virus—which was intentionally designed to be undetectable by anti-virus software—collected data from the infected computer in order to capture personal bank account information including usernames and passwords. That data was then transmitted to various computer servers controlled by the cyber criminals who used the Gozi virus. These cyber criminals then used the personal bank account information to transfer funds out of the victims’ bank accounts and ultimately into their own personal possession.

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HSBC Comeback Online After Prolonged DDoS Attack From Anonymous

HSBC Comeback Online After Prolonged DDoS Attack From Anonymous 

Massive attack against banking and financial sector continues, this time HSBC became the latest victim of cyber attack. The attack which interrupt the service for 10 hours long were mainly originated from Iran and Russia. After 'Izz ad-Din al Qassam Cyber Fighters' now it was the time for Fawkes Security, an offshoot of hacktivist group Anonymous, quickly took credit for the attack, acknowledging the take down in posts yesterday afternoon on Twitter and Pastebin The group claimed to have knocked HSBC’s main site, along with its US, UK and Canadian counterparts offline and on Friday,claimed it logged 20,000 debit card details from the site while it was down. 

According to HSBC newsroom- "On 18 October 2012 HSBC servers came under a denial of service attack which affected a number of HSBC websites around the world." But HSBC denied any sort of data loss. Fawkes Security claimed to have details of more than 20K cards, but in their release HSBC said "This denial of service attack did not affect any customer data, but did prevent customers using HSBC online services, including internet banking." 

But now the whole situation is under control, websites belonging to British bank and financial services company HSBC are back online and working normally. According to an update posted on its website, HSBC restored all of its websites globally to full accessibility as of 3:00am UK time. 

New York Stock Exchange, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank and PNC was brought down by few hacker collective group as protest against the anti Islamic movie. After this attack the name of HSBC has also been enlisted with those poor victims (affected banks & finance sector) who suffered DDoS attack in last month.

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Most Organized Banking-Trojan Called 'Gozi Prinimalka' By Russian Hackers Targeting U.S. Banks

Most Organized Banking-Trojan Called 'Gozi Prinimalka' By Russian Hackers Targeting U.S. Banks

We all might be aware of massive attack which took place last month, targeted several leading banking and financial sector of United States. The attack came just after 'anti Islamic' video was posted online. The US National Security officials accused the Iranian government for engaging cyber attacks against US Banks mainly Bank of America. Sooner or later the situation came under control. But cloud of trouble for US Banking sector is not gone completely, recently security professionals unveiled that a cartel of Russian hackers is planning to launch a separate attack aimed at stealing money from about 30 U.S. financial institutions, an apparent attempt to piggyback and capitalize on the ongoing cyber attacks on U.S. banks. The emergence of Russian hackers suggests a potential shift in the motivation of the cyber attacks from ideological to financial and also points to a longer duration of the ongoing attacks. Security experts have picked up on chatter in the cyber underworld indicating Russian cyber hackers have set their sights on about 30 U.S. financial institutions. Dubbed “Operation Blitzkrieg,” the attack is planned for this fall on 30 U.S. banks, though it’s not clear which specific institutions will be targeted. In a blog post last week, RSA said it “believes this is the making of the most substantial organized banking-Trojan operation seen to date.”

So far it’s not clear who the specific Russian hackers are, but famous security professional & blogger Brian Krebs pointed to series of posts beginning in early September on Underweb forums by a Russian hacker who uses the nickname “vorVzakone,” which translates to “thief in law.” RSA said “underground chatter” indicates the gang plans to deploy a Trojan, called “Gozi Prinimalka,” in an effort to complete fraudulent wire transfers via Man-In-The-Middle (MiTM) manual session-hacking scenarios. Herberger said MiTM is a type of attack that aims to deceive targets by violating otherwise secure communications, similar to tapping into a landline phone conversation or breaching a VPN session. “If successfully launched, the full force of this mega heist may only be felt by targeted banks in a month or two,” RSA said. The Trojan is part of a family of malware used by a crime gang that has successfully siphoned at least $5 million from banks, RSA said. The Russian hackers are also offering to pay individuals who help them carry out the attacks, indicating a desire to monetize the intrusions.

So now the vows of hacker group named 'Izz ad-Din al Qassam Cyber Fighters' is proving to be more dangerous for US. The hacker group earlier said "These series of attacks will continue until the Erasing of that nasty movie from the Internet". For your reminder this hacker group was responsible for all the major DDoS attacks against US financial sector. “It’s not uncommon that people who have a financial motive may try to take advantage of nefarious techniques,” said Herberger. “They will jump in because they can take advantage of the fact banks are laboring and security departments are becoming overrun and softened for a different kind of motivated attack.” The emergence of the threat from Russian groups underscores the prolonged nature of the attacks against corporations, especially in the financial industry. “Security teams are coming to terms that these attacks are long,” often measured in days and weeks, said Herberger. However, security teams often aren’t “staffed for attrition.”

-Source (FOX Business)

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Leading US Banking & Financial Sector Suffering From Massive DDoS Attack

Leading US Banking & Financial Sector Suffering From Massive DDoS Attack 

Few days ago in a report we said that US National Security officials accused the Iranian government for engaging cyber attacks against US Banks. The attack came just after 'anti Islamic' video was posted online. Attacks against the websites of leading banks in the United States have the banking and financial services industry on edge. The Financial Services ISAC (Information Sharing and Analysis Center) set its Threat Level to “High” on Wednesday, September 19, indicating a high risk of cyber attacks. Attacks against the websites of leading banks in the United States have the banking and financial services industry on edge. A Muslim hacking group calling itself Izz ad-Din al Qassam Cyber Fighters took responsibility for attacks on the New York Stock Exchange, Bank of America and Chase last week. This week brought attacks against Wells Fargo, US Bank and PNC. Wells Fargo used its Twitter account to apologize for service interruptions on Wednesday and said it was working to "quickly resolve this issue." Most of the targeted banks were back online and operational Thursday. The events prompted U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to use an interview on C-SPAN to point the finger of blame at the Iranian government and its elite Quds Force.
Wheather it is Iran Govt or that hacker group 'Izz ad-Din al Qassam Cyber Fighters' but the main issue of concern is that the Banking and financial sector has been highly disturbed since last few weeks. Though the situation came under control at last Thursday but still experts are predicting that this ongoing cyber attack is not over yet. In their statement the hacker group vows to engage more attack. "These series of attacks will continue until the Erasing of that nasty movie from the Internet," said the hacker.

-Source (Naked Security) 

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Iran Accused of Carrying out Cyber Attacks Against US Banks Over Anti Islamic Movie Issue

Iran Accused of Carrying out Cyber Attacks Against US Banks Over Anti Islamic Movie Issue

Since last few days, the conspiracy with the 'Anti Islamic Movie' was the headline in every where. We have seen global violence and a mass protest mainly came from Muslim brotherhood. This protest was also touched the internet, and as expected Muslim hackers joined the movement, which cost many damages for the cyber fence. Thousands of websites became victim of cyber attack, and among them several US banks also faced huge disturbance. This protest takes a new direction when Govt of Iran announced the blockage of Google Inc's search engine and its email service. "Google and Gmail will be filtered throughout the country until further notice," an official identified only by his last name, Khoramabadi, said, without giving further details. The Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) said Google ban was connected to the anti-Islamic film posted on the company's YouTube site which has caused outrage throughout the Muslim world. 

This stand of Iran Govt created a controversy, which make them responsible for carrying out cyber attacks against US banks. According to NBC news report US National Security officials accused the Iranian government for engaging cyber attacks against US Banks mainly Bank of America. But when the ball goes to Iran's side then they completely denies the blame, while saying "We officially announce that we haven't had any attacks," This statement came from the Head of Iran's civil defense agency Gholam Reza Jalali when he was asked about the report. The western media reports alleged on Friday that Muslim hackers have repeatedly attacked Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Citigroup Inc over the past year as part of a broad cyber campaign targeting the United States. Security sources told Chicago Tribune and NBC News that the attacks on the three largest US banks originated in Iran, but it is not clear if they were launched by the state, groups working on behalf of the government, or "patriotic" citizens. 

Here we want to refresh your memory while digging up a story, when Iran Govt decided a permanent Internet ban in Iran, where Iran Government has announced its plans to establish a National Intranet within five months. The Iranian minister for Information and Communications Technology, announced the setting up of a national Intranet and the effective blockage of services like Google, Gmail, Google Plus, Yahoo and Hotmail, in line with Iran's plan for a "clean Internet." And that five months is almost over, so may be the blockage of Google came due to that reason, or may be not. We suggest our readers that, it will be better if you ask yourself, that whether Iran was indeed responsible for the cyber attack or not??!!

-Source (Reuters, NBC & FARS News Agency)

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