Collaborate Disseminate
US authorities have announced charges against a Polish national who allegedly operated the LolekHosted.net bulletproof hosting service.
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Cloudzy, an internet hosting company with a New York phone number, may aiding hackers from Iran, Russia and North Korea.
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A federal judge sentenced two men to multi-year prison terms for their role in providing services to cybercriminals, including some big name malware that cost victims millions of dollars in losses, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. Chief Judge Denise Page Hood of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan gave Pavel Stassi of Estonia 24 months in prison and Aleksandr Skorodumov of Lithuania received 48 months after pleading guilty to one count each of RICO conspiracy. The two men were part of a larger operation providing “bulletproof hosting,” which involved hosting rented IP addresses, servers, domains and malware to scammers in a way that provided more anonymity and protection from law enforcement than more legitimate hosting providers would provide. The operation in which Stassi and Skorodumov were members from 2009 to 2015 hosted the Zeus malware, used to steal more than $100 million from victims. It also […]
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A Russian man was sentenced to 30 months in prison for running a website that sold stolen credit card data and other personal information to cybercriminals, according to a Department of Justice announcement. The Russian man, Kirill Victorovich Firsov, was first arrested last year, and pleaded guilty to hacking-related charges in January. Firsov was accused of having run the site, Deer.io, which hosted other cybercriminals’ shops, since 2013. Users could create accounts on Deer.io, using the platform as a foundation for their own sales. Deer.io raked in $17 million worth of sales and sold at least $1.2 million in U.S.-based stolen information, according to the Department of Justice. Many of transactions involved Americans’ names, current addresses, telephone numbers, and Social Security numbers. The Department of Justice acknowledged that U.S. law enforcement had some difficulty gaining a foothold into the site given that it was run out of Russia, but Suzanne […]
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Four Eastern European men pleaded guilty to a scheme overseeing websites that hosted malware used to cause victims hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, the Justice Department said Friday. Russian nationals Aleksandr Grichishkin and Andrei Skvortsov, along with Aleksandr Skorodumov from Lithuania and Pavel Stassi of Estonia, allegedly oversaw an organization that rented IP addresses, computers servers and domains to cybercriminals between 2008 and 2015. The practice, known as “bulletproof hosting,” is popular with digital thieves trying to evade law enforcement agencies. Grichishkin, Skvortsov, Skorodumov and Stassi pleaded guilty to one count of RICO conspiracy. They each face up to 20 years in prison. Crooks have used the hacking tools allegedly hosted by the defendants’ organizations to repeatedly infect U.S. financial institutions and defraud victims. That includes Zeus, a notorious piece of malicious code that a variety of criminals have used to steal over $100 million from victims. Despite […]
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A Russian computer security researcher has pleaded guilty to hacking-related charges in connection with U.S. law enforcement action against an internet marketplace where buyers purchased access to stolen personal data. Kirill Firsov, a Russian national, acknowledged his involvement with Deer.io, an illicit web hosting service that enabled scammers to operate independent web stores where they sold access to hacked web accounts and other services. The U.S. Department of Justice shuttered the website in March 2020, weeks after Firsov was arrested at John F. Kennedy airport in New York City. Firsov admitted his role in running Deer.io when he was apprehended at the airport, the plea deal states. He now faces up to 10 years in prison. Deer.io claimed to have more than 24,000 active websites with sales exceeding $17 million, the Justice Department said last year. Various sites hosted through the Deer.io platform offered Americans’ personal information, access to breached […]
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The latest international action against cybercrime infrastructure involves the takedown of a virtual private network (VPN) used to hide the activities of ransomware gangs and other illegal operations. The FBI and European police announced the sting against the Safe-Inet service Tuesday morning. The VPN company was billed as “cybercriminals’ favorite” by Europol. The FBI said three Web domains associated with the service — safe-inet.com, safe-inet.net and insorg.org — had been seized and then plastered with notices from police. Officials said that taking down Safe-Inet was disruptive to major active cybercriminal campaigns, but they did not specify what those were. “Active for over a decade, Safe-Inet was being used by some of the world’s biggest cybercriminals, such as the ransomware operators responsible for ransomware, E-skimming breaches and other forms of serious cybercrime,” according to a news release from Europol, the top police agency for the European Union. “This VPN service was […]
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The alleged leaders of an international video game piracy group apparently didn’t do enough to protect their scheme from the prying eyes of the feds. The Department of Justice says two men have been arrested on felony charges of helping run Team Xecuter, which sold modification kits and other tools that allowed users of the Nintendo Switch and other gaming devices to play pirated versions of games. The federal indictment charges Canadian national Gary Bowser, French national Max Louarn and Chinese national Yuanning Chen with 11 counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering in connection with Team Xecuter. The indictment does not link the three men to any other hacking groups. In many ways, though, the Justice Department’s approach to charging them mirrors other recent efforts to accuse and apprehend foreigners in cybercrime cases involving financial fraud or cyber-espionage. Team Xecuter, which claims to have been […]
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A lawyer for an alleged player in one of the largest hacking schemes in history says he is talking with the Department of Justice about the possibility of bringing his client to the U.S. to stand trial. Mikhail Rytikov can’t leave his home country of Ukraine because he would risk becoming the latest Eastern European snatched up by Western law enforcement and charged in cybercrimes. The 30-year-old, who lives in Odessa on the coast of the Black Sea, allegedly participated in criminal schemes by running a profitable “bulletproof hosting” business — servers that police supposedly can’t block or access — known as AbdAllah. Ukraine doesn’t extradite its own citizens, so Rytikov is theoretically safe as long as he stays close to home. But he vehemently denies any wrongdoing, and apparently wants to set the record straight. His lawyer in the U.S., Arkady Bukh, told CyberScoop he is negotiating with the Department of Justice about the possibility of standing trial in […]
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It may soon become easier for Internet service providers to anticipate and block certain types of online assaults launched by Web-based attack-for-hire services known as “booter” or “stresser” services, new research released today suggests. Continue reading Are the Days of “Booter” Services Numbered?