May 17 – ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A federal grand jury returned an 11-count indictment today charging two Syrian men with offenses relating to their participation in a conspiracy to engage in computer hacking as members of the “Syrian Electronic Army” or “SEA.” Ahmad ‘Umar Agha, who is known online as the “The Pro,” and Firas Dardar,…
Category: Of Note
Cyber-Criminal Residing in Latvia Convicted for Role in Operation of Counter Antivirus Service “Scan4you”
May 16 – A federal jury today convicted a Latvian “non-citizen,” meaning a citizen of the former USSR who had been residing in Riga, Latvia, of three counts related to his operation of “Scan4you,” an online counter antivirus service that helped computer hackers to determine whether the computer viruses and other malicious software they created would…
UK: Crown Prosecution Service fined £325,000 after losing victim interview videos
How many monetary penalties will it take before the Crown Prosecution Service gets its data protection act together and does a reasonable job of protecting victim-related information?This is the second monetary penalty they’ve been hit with in the past few years: The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has been fined £325,000 by the ICO after they…
Respiratory therapy supplier Lincare agrees to pay $875K to settle data breach lawsuit
Evan Sweeney reports: The country’s largest provider of home respiratory supplies has agreed to pay $875,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit from former employees whose information was exposed during a 2017 data breach. The settlement (PDF) resolves a lawsuit filed last fall that claimed Lincare failed to implement “the most basic security safeguards” to prevent…
Hacker Dumps Data Stolen From Government-Linked Cyberespionage Group
Joseph Cox reports: Last week, Motherboard reported that a vigilante hacker had stolen data from a hacking group that researchers say is a government-linked cyberespionage unit. The data included GPS locations, text messages, and phone calls that the group had taken from their own victims. Now, that hacker has seemingly published the stolen data online…
Ex-CIA employee ID’d but not charged in Vault 7 leak of hacking tools
It’s the leak/spy story of the year, I think. But no one has been charged as yet, even though they have a suspect. Dan Goodin reports: Federal authorities have identified a suspect behind last year’s Vault 7 leak of Central Intelligence Agency hacking tools. The trove published to WikiLeaks included exploits and documents for infecting…