Collaborate Disseminate
The SEC, FBI, and DoJ are all investigating Facebook on the heels of its Cambridge-Analytica scandal from March. Continue reading More Federal Agencies Wrapped Up in Facebook Data Privacy Probe
A former high-ranking lawyer at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is going to jail for four years after stealing the identities of US immigrants. Continue reading Immigrant identity thief and ICE lawyer gets four years
The Department of Justice’s internal “Cyber-Digital Task Force,” created by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in February, will release its first-ever public report later this month at the Aspen Institute’s annual Security Forum, a department spokesperson told CyberScoop. The report is expected to detail a series of security recommendations that the government should consider to protect future U.S. elections from a myriad of different threats, including foreign hacking attempts. A statement by the DOJ previously explained that the Task Force will “prioritize its study of efforts to interfere with our elections; efforts to interfere with our critical infrastructure; the use of the Internet to spread violent ideologies and to recruit followers; the mass theft of corporate, governmental, and private information; the use of technology to avoid or frustrate law enforcement; and the mass exploitation of computers and other digital devices to attack American citizens and businesses.” When Sessions launched the group earlier this year, […]
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As around 35 alleged drug vendors have found out to their cost, you never know who you’ll meet on the dark web.
In the case of the customers of one money laundering operation, it turned out to be agents working for the US Immigration and Customs Enf… Continue reading Fake Bitcoin exchange traps drug dealers on the dark web
The FBI took six months to track him down – what they found was a disturbed hacker with “no skills”. Continue reading So long! ‘The internet’s most inept criminal’ goes to jail
The British man charged in the U.S. with developing the “Kronos” banking malware has been indicted under a new set of criminal accusations that say he developed and sold the “UPAS Kit” spybot virus. The new indictment also charges the man, Marcus Hutchins, with lying to the FBI about knowing his code was a part of Kronos. Hutchins, who has repeatedly denied any illegal activity and is now living in California on bail, responded quickly on Twitter, saying “these [expletive]nuggets just won’t give up.” He quickly deleted that tweet. Hutchins’ defense team has been continuously battling federal prosecutors over evidence used in the case. While the court continues to consider the defense’s arguments about the original charges, prosecutors dropped a new indictment this week. The charges of lying come from an exchange that Hutchins’ defense team is disputing and hoping to see dismissed. It was an Aug. 2, 2017, discussion — while Hutchins was in federal custody — […]
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Continue reading Marcus Hutchins faces new charges of developing malware and lying to FBI
A former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) official was caught providing secret military documents to the Chinese government, including what appears to be sensitive information about the locations of U.S. Cyber Command outposts and personnel, according to a newly unsealed Justice Department indictment. The case reveals an increasingly obvious counterintelligence battle between the U.S. and China as the two countries are spending billions on developing advanced cyberwarfare units. The arrest of Ron Rockwell Hansen, a 20-year Army veteran, marks the third publicly visible case in the last year of an American passing secretive documents to Chinese government-linked agents. Former Central Intelligence Agency case officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee was arrested in January for allegedly tipping off Chinese spies to the CIA’s human network inside the authoritarian regime. No longer employed by the government but still familiar with the U.S. intelligence community, Hansen possessed top-secret security clearances for both his civilian and active-duty work. He […]
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A pair of Romanians accused of an international hacking and identity theft conspiracy were extradited from Romania to the United States on Friday to face 31 criminal charges in federal court. Teodor Laurentiu Costea, 41, and Robert Codrut Dumitrescu, 40, allegedly installed interactive voice response software on vulnerable computers as part of a phone scamming plot pretending to make calls from financial institutions in order to steal account numbers, PINs, and Social Security numbers from victims. The Justice Department’s announcement on the extradition characterize the tactics as “vishing” and “smishing” — phishing by voice and text messages respectively. Costea and Dumitrescu then allegedly sold the information. American officials estimate the losses from the scheme amount to over $18 million. The U.S. government has extradited a number of criminals tied to cybercrime in the past few months. In March, the Justice Department extradited Yevgeniy Nikulin from the Czech Republic. Nikulin was allegedly breaches tied to LinkedIn, Dropbox […]
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Continue reading Accused Romanian hackers and financial fraudsters extradited to U.S.
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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Continue reading Ukrainian accused in cybercrime wave is considering trial in U.S., lawyer says
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new cybersecurity task force on Tuesday that aims to appraise the way the Department of Justice handles cases that involve the internet. The Cyber-Digital Task Force “will canvass the many ways that the Department is combatting the global cyber threat, and will also identify how federal law enforcement can more effectively accomplish its mission in this vital and evolving area,” a news release said. Sessions said he is creating the task force in order to generate ideas on how to best combat global cyberthreats. “The Internet has given us amazing new tools that help us work, communicate, and participate in our economy, but these tools can also be exploited by criminals, terrorists, and enemy governments,” Sessions said. The deputy attorney general will appoint a senior department official to chair the task force. DOJ declined to provide any more information about the task force, such as […]
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Continue reading DOJ looks to improve handling of cyberthreats with new task force