Casey Newton reports: In late July, Snap’s director of engineering emailed the company’s team in response to an unfolding privacy threat. A government official from Dorset in the United Kingdom had provided Snap with information about a recent attack on the company’s users: a publicly available list, embedded in a phishing website named klkviral.org, that…
Category: Business Sector
A Hacker Has Wiped a Spyware Company’s Servers—Again
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai reports: Last year, a vigilante hacker broke into the servers of a company that sells spyware to everyday consumers and wiped their servers, deleting photos captured from monitored devices. A year later, the hacker has done it again. Thursday, the hacker said he started wiping some cloud servers that belong to Retina-X Studios,…
UK: Businessman ‘seeking revenge’ turned to computer hacking against company
Elwyn Roberts reports: A businessman turned computer hacker has today been warned that he faces custody. Gavin Paul Prince had previously denied five offences under the Computer Misuse Act. But today he changed his pleas to guilty and Judge David Hale described his actions as seeking revenge against a company. Prince pleaded guilty to unauthorised…
Atos, IT provider for Winter Olympics, hacked months before Opening Ceremony cyberattack
Chris Bing reports: Hackers armed with destructive malware appear to have compromised the main IT service provider for the Winter Olympic Games months before last week’s highly publicized cyberattack. Publicly available evidence analyzed by experts and reviewed by CyberScoop suggests that whoever deployed the Olympic Destroyer malware on Feb. 9 likely previously penetrated a series of computer systems around December…
Victims of cryptocurrency hack suing Coincheck for $650 million theft
Jake Sturmer reports: Victims of one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency hacks are suing Coincheck, the Japanese company whose network was breached in a theft worth more than $650 million. Lawyers have launched proceedings against the company in the Tokyo District Court, and believe the case could turn into one of the biggest consumer rights…
12 years in prison for man who hacked Nasdaq, helped swipe 160M credit cards
Cyrus Farivar reports: Two Russian men convicted of their involvement in a massive hack of the Nasdaq stock exchange, Citibank, and other major companies have been given hefty sentences. The two men, Vladimir Drinkman and Dmitriy Smilianets, pleaded guilty in 2015. On Wednesday, Drinkman was sentenced to 144 months, while Smilianets was given 51 months. Read more…