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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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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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 Cleary, Jake Davis, Raynaldo Rivera, Cody 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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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 Anonymous. Prosecutors 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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'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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Junaid Hussain aka "TriCk" -Former Leader of "TeaMp0isoN" Pleads Guilty

Junaid Hussain aka "TriCk" -TeaMp0isoN Leader Pleads Guilty at London's Southwark Crown Court

Earlier in this year MI6 arrested the leader of TeaMp0isoN code named "TriCk" along with few other active members who ware directly involved behind the Denial of Service attack on MI6 hotline. Few days later some other members of this hacker group tried to threaten the Govt while saying "it will fight back against the arrest of its members." But now all these efforts seems worthless because the leader of infamous hacker collective group "TeaMp0isoN" has pleaded guilty to stealing the address book details and other private data from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in June of last year. According to the sources Junaid Hussain, also known as "TriCk", has now admitted to hacking into a Gmail email account belonging an advisor to Blair by the name of Katy Kay. 

Hussain, 18, from Birmingham, said that he used an ID "Trick" to access the aide's account and steal confidential data including addresses, phone numbers and email addresses belonging to Blair, his wife, and sister-in-law Lyndsye Booth, as well as Members of Parliament (MPs) and Members of the House of Lords. Ben Cooper, Hussain's lawyer, told the court that the offences had just been a prank. After admitting to conspiracy and computer charges at London's Southwark Crown Court, Judge Peter Testar granted Hussain bail until sentencing later this month, advising him to be "under no illusions" that he may go to prison. Hussain has also confessed to taking part in and leading members of the hacker group to attack the UK national Anti-Terrorist Hotline with hundreds of hoax phone calls and involvement with hacktivist Anonymous in #OpRobinHood, #OpCensorThis and few more.

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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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LulzSec Hacker Ryan Cleary & Jake Davis Plead Guilty at London Court For Hacking CIA & Pentagon

LulzSec Hacker Ryan Cleary & Jake Davis Plead Guilty at London Court For Hacking CIA & Pentagon

Two British LulzSec hacker Ryan Cleary, 20, and Jake Davis, 19 today admitted hacking into the websites of the CIA and the Pentagon as well as the Serious Organised Crime Squad in the UK. Accoridng to an exclusive report of The Guardian both Jake Davies, also known as "Topiary" and Ryan Cleary, known under the names "Anakin," "hershcel.mcdooenstein", "George hampsterman" and "ni"  have confessed attacks on the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), National Health Service, News International, Sony, Nintendo, Arizona State police, and other sites in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks designed to cause the sites to cash. Cleary also confessed to four separate charges including hacking into US Air Force Agency computers at the Pentagon.

Cleary and Davis plotted to carry out the attacks with other unknown members of internet groups Anonymous, Internet Feds, and LulzSec. Other websites targeted by the pair were Westboro Baptist Church, Bethesda, Eve Online, HBGary, HBGary Federal, PBS Inc, and Infragard. Cleary also confessed today to four separate charges, including hacking into US Air Force Agency computers, based at the Pentagon.

Both men appeared in the dock at Southwark Crown Court to enter guilty pleas to a series of charges brought against them.

But both Cleary and Davis denied allegations they posted 'unlawfully obtained confidential computer data' to public websites including LulzSec.com, Pirate Bay, and PasteBin, in order to encourage offences contrary to the Serious Crime Act.

Alleged co-hackers Ryan Ackroyd, 25, and a 17-year-old A-level student, from south-London, deny their involvement in the DDoS attacks and will stand trial on April 8, 2013.

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Facebook Law-Enforcement Tool

U.S. law-enforcement agencies are increasingly obtaining warrants to search Facebook, often gaining detailed access to users' accounts without their knowledge. A Reuters review of the Westlaw legal database shows that since 2008, federal judges have authorized at least two dozen warrants to search individuals' Facebook accounts. Many of the warrants requested a laundry list of personal data such as messages, status updates, links to videos and photographs, calendars of future and past events, "Wall postings" and "rejected Friend requests."
Federal agencies seeking the warrants include the FBI, DEA and ICE, and the investigations range from arson to rape to terrorism. The Facebook search warrants typically demand a user''s "Neoprint" and "Photoprint" -- terms that Facebook has used to describe a detailed package of profile and photo information that is not even available to users themselves. These terms appear in manuals for law enforcement agencies on how to request data from Facebook. The manuals, posted on various public-advocacy websites, appear to have been prepared by Facebook, although a spokesman for the company declined to confirm their authenticity.
The review of Westlaw data indicates that federal agencies were granted at least 11 warrants to search Facebook since the beginning of 2011, nearly double the number for all of 2010. The precise number of warrants served on Facebook is hard to determine, in part because some records are sealed, and warrant applications often involve unusual case names. (One example: "USA v. Facebook USER ID Associated with email address jimmie_white_trash@yahoo.com," a sealed case involving a drug sale.) In a telephone interview, Facebook's Chief Security Officer, Joe Sullivan, declined to say how many warrants had been served on the company. He said Facebook is sensitive to user privacy and that it regularly pushes back against law-enforcement "fishing expeditions."

NOT CHALLENGED:-

None of the warrants discovered in the review have been challenged on the grounds that it violated a person's Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure, according to a review of the cases. Some constitutional-law experts said the Facebook searches may not have been challenged because the defendants - not to mention their "friends" or others whose pages might have been viewed as part of an investigation -- never knew about them.
By law, neither Facebook nor the government is obliged to inform a user when an account is subject to a search by law enforcement, though prosecutors are required to disclose material evidence to a defendant. Twitter and several other social-media sites have formally adopted a policy to notify users when law enforcement asks to search their profile. Last January, Twitter also successfully challenged a gag order imposed by a federal judge in Virginia that forbade the company from informing users that the government had demanded their data.
Twitter said in an email message that its policy was "to help users protect their rights." The Facebook spokesperson would not say whether the company had a similar policy to notify users or if it was considering adopting one.

THE CASE OF THE SATANISTS:-
In several recent cases, however, Facebook apparently did not inform account-holders or their lawyers about government snooping. Last year, several weeks after police apprehended four young Satanists who burned down a church in Pomeroy, Ohio, an FBI agent executed a search warrant on Facebook seeking data about two of the suspects. All four ultimately pleaded guilty and received sentences of eight to ten years in state prison (along with a message of forgiveness from a church official who called the sentence "God's time out," and presented them with a Bible). It is unclear if data obtained from the warrant was used in the investigation. Lawyers for the two defendants were unaware of the searches until they were contacted by Reuters.
In another case, the DEA searched the account of Nathan Kuemmerle, a Hollywood psychiatrist who pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court after a joint operation last year by the DEA and local police revealed he had run a "pill mill" for celebrity customers.
Westlaw records show that that the DEA executed a warrant to search Kuemmerle's Facebook account weeks after his arrest.
At Kuemmerle's bail hearing, a Redondo Beach police detective pointed to comments Kuemmerle made on Facebook and in the site's popular game "Mafia Wars" to argue that he should be denied bail.
According to Kuemmerle's lawyer, John Littrell, the detective testified on cross-examination that the information was from "an undercover source." Littrell told Reuters that neither he nor his client was ever informed about the warrant, and that he only learned of its existence from Reuters.
The detective said in an e-mail message that he did not recall being asked about how he obtained the Facebook information. The DEA did not reply to requests for comment.

POTENTIAL FOR NEW LEGAL CHALLENGES:-
The Facebook searches potentially open up new legal challenges in an area that at one time seemed relatively settled: How much protection an individual has against government searches of personal information held by third parties. In a 1976 case, United States v. Miller, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a bank did not have to inform its customer when it turned over his financial records to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
In doing so, the Supreme Court held that the customer could not invoke Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure because the records were bank property in which he had no legitimate "expectation of privacy."
Under this reasoning, a person would have no more expectation of privacy in Facebook content than in bank records. A key difference, however, is the scale of information that resides on social networking sites. "It is something new," said Thomas Clancy, a constitutional-law professor at the University of Mississippi. "It''s the amount of information and data being provided as a matter of course by third parties."
Eben Moglen, a cyberlaw professor at Columbia Law School, says the Facebook searches show that courts are ill-equipped to safeguard privacy rights in an age of digital media. In his view, "the solutions aren't legal, they''re technical."
Clancy, the Mississippi professor, said that courts are divided over whether the unprecedented volume of digital records in the possession of third parties should give rise to special rules governing the search of electronic data.
He added that the Supreme Court had an opportunity to clarify the issue in a case called Ontario v. Quon, but that it decided to "punt."
The Quon case concerned a California policeman who claimed his employer violated his Fourth Amendment rights when it read sexually explicit messages that he had sent from a work pager.
The Court found that that the employer's search was not unreasonable, but declined to rule on the degree to which people have a privacy interest in electronic data controlled by others.
Explaining the court's caution, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "The judiciary risks error by elaborating too fully on the Fourth Amendment implications of emerging technology before its role in society has become clear."

To download the Facebook Law Enforcement Guidance click Here

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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 Davis, Jeremy Hammond, Raynaldo Rivera & Cody 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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LulzSec Hacker 'Raynaldo Rivera' Arrested Over Sony Pictures Hack

LulzSec Hacker 'Raynaldo Rivera' Arrested Over Sony Pictures Hack

Last year hackers have targeted Sony many times.  Hacktivist Anonymous, Lulzsec have penetrated Sony's PSN network and stolen millions of user personal information. Later Sony was forced to shutdown its entire network & apologized for the whole massacre. Not only PSN, also Sony Online Entertainment, Sony Pictures, Several Sony's official website from different countries fallen victim to the hackers.  But in 2012 all the key members of LulzSec, who was mainly responsible for attack on Sony get busted one by one. Among them we can take the name of Jeremy Hammond, Ryan Ackroyd, Ryan Cleary, Jake Davis & so on. In the last move another hacker from LulzSec has been arrested in connection with an attack on Sony Pictures in June last year. A 20-year-old man 'Raynaldo Rivera' surrendered to FBI agents on Tuesday for his alleged hacking of Sony Pictures. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison.

The arrest comes shortly after a judge postponed the sentencing of LulzSec ringleader Hector Xavier Monsegur, known by his nickname "Sabu," for his continued cooperation in the investigation. Monsegur provided information to the FBI, leading to the arrests of one American man and four in the U.K. in March. 

Rivera allegedly used a proxy server to hide his real IP address and used a SQL injection attack against Sony, according the indictment, which was unsealed on Tuesday. The type of attack involves the input of commands into web-based forms to see if the backend database will yield information. Rivera, who went by the online nicknames "neuron," "royal" and "wildicv," allegedly distributed Sony's information to other LulzSec members, who publicized it on the @LulzSec Twitter account, the indictment said. Damages to Sony exceeded US$5,000.

Prosecutors allege Rivera worked with Cody Kretsinger, who was indicted in Sept. 2011 for the same attacks on Sony. Kretsinger allegedly provided the coupon codes along with email addresses and passwords for an extensive data release by LulzSec on June 2, 2011. Kretsinger pleaded guilty in April and is scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 25, according to the FBI.

-Source (BBC, PCW)

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Angelina Jolie & Lady Gaga Became Victim of Ongoing Celebrity Hacking

Angelina Jolie & Lady Gaga Became Victim of Ongoing Celebrity Hacking 

Now a days it has became a fascination for cyber criminals to target and hack celebrities and public figures. Earlier we have seen similar scenario many a time. Last month an unnamed hacker released personal details of many public figure, national leaders, celebrities. The hacked data dubbed "The Secret Files" by the hackers contains personal information and credit reports (including social security numbers, details of their mortgages, addresses, and details of their credit card and banking details) was made public by those hackers on a website. Now we have past just a couple of weeks, yet again the same massacre took place, the hackers returned to the Internet after a brief hiatus and immediately hit six more. 

Angelina Jolie who played a key role in one of the most fine hacking movie named "Hackers" herself became victim to hackers in real life, as well as Jolie; Lady Gaga, NRA advocate Wayne LaPierre, Dennis Rodman, Michael Vick, Secret Service Director Julia Pierson and Robert De Niro. 

Like earlier, this time also the nature of the hack was similar to the previous the hackers have posted what they claim to be the social security numbers, mortgage amounts, credit card info, car loans, banking and other info for the celebs listed on their site. Last time, the website; where the hacker have posted those hacked credentials; were shutdown by the authorities. But it's now back up and running with a new domain extension (.re) that suggests it's based out of the French island of Réunion located off the coast of Madagascar -said TMZ in an exclusive report. Again also the same style were followed by the hacker group and leaving the very same message saying - "If you believe that God makes miracles, you have to wonder if Satan has a few up his sleeve."

According to sources - Jolie's page (prepared by the hacker) includes what is said to be her social security number as well as her credit report, which can be downloaded. There are addresses listed as well, but they are all business addresses, likely for her lawyer and other people she employs. The same information for Lady Gaga and Johansson is also available. However, Johansson's page also features a photo of her which became public through a previous hacking incident. The FBI has already started investigation, but so far no arrest have been made. In 2011 another high profile hack taken place, where the hacker targeted several celebrities like Scarlett Johansson & few more; while leaking nude photos. Later FBI carried out a special operation named 'Hackerazzi' which put a full stop in that issue and also FBI arrested the master mind named Christopher Chaney was sentenced to imprisonment after pleading guilty. 

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Executives underestimate cybercrime danger

These are boom times for stolen data. Be it the publication of secret diplomatic cables on Wikileaks, foreign intelligence services mining data from German government computers, or the case of Sony, which had to admit that information on millions of customers had been hacked, the incidence of sensitive data being stolen from protected networks is on the rise.
German business leaders are well aware of this phenomenon, according to consulting firm Ernst & Young, which surveyed 400 executives on the topic of economic espionage and data theft. Almost all the respondents said they were convinced that the problem would become even more serious in the future, especially in countries and regions such as Asia, China, eastern Europe, Russia and the US.
However, Ernst & Young found a remarkable contradiction in its poll. While 94 percent of those leaders surveyed talked about the growing danger of cybercrime, 38 percent said they thought the threat to their own firm was rather small.



Digital denial
One-half of those polled said the danger posed to their companies was only moderate, and only one in ten admitted that their firms had been victims of corporate espionage or data theft in the past three years.
"This is far removed from reality," said Stefan Heissner, a security expert at Ernst & Young. "Our experience tells us that every company faces this risk, not just large corporations."
He added that many executives do not take the risk seriously enough.
"All information today can be accessed in some way and those who don't accept that live with a sense of false security," he said.


In-house problem
Sometimes simple online searches and the collection of data from different sources, available to anyone with an Internet connection, can lead to the assembly of amazingly complete troves of sensitive information.
Getting hold of important information doesn't always involve a talented hacker or direct access to a data-rich computer and a USB stick. Sometimes human vanity is enough, according to Heissner.
"Just think of the amounts of know-how some people reveal in speeches at conferences or trade fairs," he said. "It's sometimes really dramatic."

However, the most dangerous risk for companies is not hackers from another continent - experience bears out – but disgruntled in-house workers. In two-thirds of data theft cases, companies say their own employees were the guilty parties.
In about half of those instances, monetary gain was the motive, although one-third involved taking revenge for some kind of slight, perceived or otherwise.
"A good defense against data theft is satisfied employees," said Heissner.


Antitrust issues
Computers in a company's administration department are most frequently targeted, even more often than those in research and development sections. According to Heissner, that is because a company's administration usually has to have an immense amount of information on its computer drives just to be able market its own products.
That means data theft from these machines often becomes an antitrust issue if the material taken is related to product launches or pricing.
"Some cases where antitrust authorities suspect price collusion among companies are in fact instances of data theft by competitors," Heisser said.



Lax security
Many firms struggle to establish effective countermeasures to prevent data theft. While most companies do have a basic system of firewalls and passwords in place, big holes often remain.
Only one in five companies forbid CD burners or USB ports on its computers, which are often used by data thieves absconding with precious data. Only about 18 percent of companies prohibit employees from accessing the Internet. And just 6 percent have installed so-called intrusion detection systems, which can alert system administrators when outside parties try to breach computer security walls.
In addition, only one in ten firms is certified according to standards set out by the Federal Office of Information Security (BSI), which investigates IT security risks and develops preventive security measures.

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Google Fined $5 Million For Linux Patent Infringement

A Texas jury has found Google guilty of infringing a patent related to the Linux kernel, which is at the core of Google's server farm. The patent is held by Bedrock Computer Technologies LLC. The patent-in-suit is U.S. Patent No. 5,893,120 on "methods and apparatus for information storage and retrieval using a hashing technique with external chaining and on-the-fly removal of expired data". 

The jury have ordered Google to pay a $5 Million fine for the past infringement up to the court date, and it is presumed Google are now expected to have to pay royalty fees. 

$5 Million isn't a lot of money with resources like Google, but the problem is that Bedrock is now in a pretty strong position to collect royalties from other Linux users, especially those utilizing Linux for large server operations.

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