Robert Abel reports: Jermaine Smith, a member of the cybercrime syndicate Carder[dot]su, was sentenced to over 12 years in prison this Thursday, and ordered to pay $50.8 million in restitution. The 34-year-old Smith (a.k.a.”SirCharlie57” and “Fairbusinessman”) pleaded guilty in October 2014 to one count of participating in a racketeer-influenced corrupt organization, according to a Department of Justice release….
Month: April 2015
OpIsrael: Anonymous Hacks Israeli Arms Importer Website, Leaks Thousands of Login Data
Waqas writes: Online hacktivist Anonymous has breached into an Israeli gun shop website (lhbltd.com) and leaked login credentials plus personal details of its local and international customers, including some government officers. The leaked data files have been divided and pasted in three different parts on Pastie sites for #OpIsrael. After analyzing the data we found out that data…
More police departments acknowledge paying ransom to unlock their systems
And yet more police departments pay ransom to unlock their systems. WCSH in Maine reports: Lincoln County Sheriff Todd Brackett said four towns and the county have a special computer network to share files and records. Someone accidentally downloaded a virus, called “megacode”, that put an encryption code on all the computer data. The Sheriff…
Walters McCann Fanska notifies clients of network security breach
Kansas City-based accounting firm Walters McCann Fanska is notifying clients that their personal and financial account information may have been acquired by a hacker or hackers who had access to the firm’s network from sometime late last year until late February 2015. To their credit, the firm noticed suspicious activity with some accounts at the end…
The train wreck that was (is?) Pasco County School District’s IT security
I continue to look for details on the case of a 14-year old middle school student who is facing two felony counts for allegedly hacking into his district’s network (see previous coverage of the case on this blog here and here). In today’s installment of How Badly Can a District Screw Up InfoSecurity? Ashley Feinberg of…
Education Sector Struggles With Botnets: BitSight
As this blog makes painfully clear, the education sector struggles with data security and lags way behind other sectors, in my opinion. Now a new report indicates another area of security where they’re lagging. Brian Prince reports: The education industry – which includes education companies, schools and colleges – brought up the rear in a new…