Category Archives: Department of Justice

Complex court battle for Methbot, 3ve cybercrime suspects only is getting started

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Alleged perpetrators of the Methbot and 3ve cybercrime rings have started to arrive in the U.S. to face accusations that they orchestrated a broad conspiracy to defraud advertisers for millions of dollars. Yevgeniy Timchenko, a 30-year-old citizen of Kazakhstan, appeared Wednesday in federal district court in Brooklyn alongside Aleksandr Zhukov, a Russian national, in a short status hearing. Both men had bald heads with facial hair and stood before the judge in beige jumpsuits. Lawyers asked for more time to review discovery materials in a case where the evidence is “extremely voluminous” and comes in multiple languages, including Russian and Bulgarian. The Department of Justice has linked Timchenko to 3ve and Zhukov to Methbot, two distinct ad-fraud operations outlined in the same indictment unsealed in November. Both groups used botnet-based schemes to boost web traffic numbers in plots to collect money from legitimate advertising companies lured into investing in seemingly trustworthy businesses. Members of Methbot and 3ve (pronounced “eve”), while working in different […]

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Two hackers charged for DDoS attacks, threats to LAX

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Two men were charged with conducting cyberattacks on various organizations and threatening physical violence on Southern California school districts and the Los Angeles International Airport, among other targets, according to an indictment that was unsealed by U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday. The men, an American and a Briton, sent false reports of violent attacks on schools via email and carried out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on websites, according to the indictment announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Central District of California. The defendants –a 19-year-old British national named George Duke-Cohan and a 20-year-old North Carolina man named Timothy Dalton Vaughn – are accused of being part of a hacking collective known as Apophis Squad. Duke-Cohan is already serving a prison sentence in Britain for threatening violence on an airliner, U.S. officials said. Vaughn’s online moniker, “WantedbyFeds,” turned prophetic Tuesday morning when he was arrested by U.S. authorities. Their alleged criminal […]

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U.S. busts Romanian cybercrime ring that phished Americans, laundered millions of dollars

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U.S. authorities on Thursday announced the indictment of 20 people and the extradition of a dozen in a big bust of an organized cybercrime ring in Romania. The defendants are accused of being part of an online auction scheme that defrauded Americans of millions of dollars. The racket involved advertising nonexistent cars and other purportedly valuable items on Craigslist and eBay and tricking victims into paying for them, often using stolen identities. The fraudsters then allegedly laundered their ill-gotten gains via cryptocurrency, the Department of Justice said in a statement. In a separate, cyber-focused indictment unsealed Thursday, one of the defendants, Adrian Mitan, is accused of phishing for customers’ credit and debit card information, breaching U.S. companies, and then doing a brute-force attack on point-of-sale systems to extract more card data. The 24-year-old Romanian allegedly told American money launderers to set up credit and debit card accounts with the stolen […]

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Congress must do more in fight against global cybercrime, advocacy group says

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In a speech to Interpol in November, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein lobbied other governments to do more to help Washington track down foreign cybercriminals. “By devoting appropriate resources to international cooperation efforts, we can properly address the increasing threat of cybercrime,” he said, adding later: “No nation should exempt itself from just and reasonable law enforcement cooperation.” Rosenstein was acknowledging that regardless of the Department of Justice’s investments in countering cybercrime in the United States, the department’s ability to put foreign crooks behind bars can rest, in part, on other governments’ cooperation in finding and extraditing them. That’s why, analysts say, it’s crucial to fund U.S. programs to boost foreign governments’ ability to crack down on hackers. A new advocacy effort from the think tank Third Way is trying to focus U.S. policymakers’ attention on making those programs more effective. “We think that the U.S. government should be […]

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U.S. charges Huawei and affiliates with extensive list of crimes

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U.S. officials on Monday announced nearly two dozen criminal charges in two separate cases against Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and its affiliates, escalating a long-running U.S. crackdown on Chinese tech companies over allegations of rule-breaking and spying. The first case, a 10-count indictment returned by a federal jury in Washington state, accuses Huawei subsidiaries of stealing trade secrets from telecom company T-Mobile. The other case, a 13-count indictment from a federal jury in New York, alleges that Huawei officials and subsidiaries committed bank and wire fraud, and violated trade sanctions against Iran. Huawei officials are also accused of obstructing justice by trying to move witnesses with knowledge of Huawei’s Iran-based business to China, where they could not be questioned. Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou is accused of being part of the fraud scheme. The U.S. is seeking Meng’s extradition, acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said at a press conference Monday. Huawei executives “repeatedly […]

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Feds shutter xDedic, a black market used to commit $68 million in fraud

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An online marketplace that facilitated more than $68 million in fraud and cybercrime has been shut down following an international law enforcement operation, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday. Hackers and thieves used the website, known as xDedic, to sell access to compromised computers located around the world and personal information belonging to U.S. residents, prosecutors said. Buyers could search the site by price, operating system or by the geographic region from where it was stolen, prosecutors said. The method of access was usually through credentials for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) servers. The DOJ didn’t name any victims, but said they included major metropolitan transit organizations, emergency services, government agencies, pension funds, universities and others. The site was shut down in 2016, only to re-emerge soon after on the dark web with the new stipulation that members pay $50 to enter. “The xDedic marketplace operated across a widely distributed network and […]

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Two Ukrainians charged with hacking into SEC’s EDGAR database

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The Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice announced charges Tuesday against an alleged Ukrainian hacker and several other suspects in a scheme where nonpublic information was taken from the commission’s corporate filing system and used for illegal financial trading. Oleksandr Ieremenko is alleged to have hacked into the SEC’s EDGAR system, accessing “test files,” which companies can use to submit information ahead of their public earnings reports. Sometimes companies include nonpublic information in those filings. According to the SEC and U.S. Attorney’s Office of  New Jersey, Ieremenko extracted nonpublic test files from SEC servers, and then passed the information to different groups of traders. The traders made transactions before at least 157 earnings releases from May to October 2016, generating at least $4.1 million in illegal profits. The SEC discovered the breach in 2016 after realizing there was a vulnerability in the EDGAR system. The agency didn’t suspect until […]

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Justice Department hopes to disrupt ‘dumbest tradition ever’ with latest DDoS seizure

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Law enforcement may have just ruined what’s become a holiday tradition for cybercriminals who spend Christmas knocking gaming websites offline. The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Thursday officials had seized 15 internet domains that made it possible for web users to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks, which render software inaccessible by flooding targets with fake traffic. The sites involved in the takedown were known as “booter” and “stresser” websites, which enabled users to easily launch DDoS attacks like the kinds that have hit Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox services in recent Christmas seasons. Prosecutors also filed charged against two men with conspiring to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by allegedly operating DDoS-for-hire services known as Downthem and Ampnode. In another case, investigators charged a 23-year-old Pennsylvania man with operating a criminal service that was used to launch more than 50,000 attacks in 2018 alone. “The attack-for-hire websites targeted […]

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U.S. indicts China-linked group over wide-ranging hacking operations

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The Justice Department on Thursday unsealed charges against two hackers linked with China’s civilian intelligence agency for a lengthy campaign to break into global technology service providers in efforts to steal intellectual property. The campaign targeted more than 45 companies in a dozen countries, including sectors ranging from aviation to pharmaceuticals, along with U.S. Navy, a Department of Energy laboratory, and NASA, prosecutors alleged. The defendants also stole the Social Security numbers and other personal information of over 100,000 Navy personnel, U.S. officials said. “The list of victim companies reads like a who’s who of the global economy,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said while announcing the charges. Other companies targeted included those in manufacturing, oil and gas, and maritime technology, U.S officials said. The pair of hackers – Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong – are accused of being part of a Chinese hacking group known as APT10 or Cloudhopper. Industry […]

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Five Men Responsible for 7,200-Foot Mushroom Cloud Explosion in Louisiana Sentenced to Prison

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Employees of the company Explo Systems were sentenced on Friday for a criminal conspiracy involving Army explosives. Continue reading Five Men Responsible for 7,200-Foot Mushroom Cloud Explosion in Louisiana Sentenced to Prison→