Category Archives: U.S. courts

Fintech company Plaid, consumers reach $58M settlement agreement in privacy suit

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Financial tech company Plaid has reached a $58 million settlement agreement in a lawsuit where customers alleged that the company obtained and used their banking information without permission. Plaid’s service connects customer banking accounts to financial apps like Venmo and Robinhood. The plaintiffs claimed that Plaid misled them and violated their privacy by obtaining data from their financial accounts without consent, getting their bank login information through a deceptive interface meant to look like customers’ own bank login screens and selling their transaction histories. Under the settlement agreement, still subject to court approval, Plaid must also delete some data from its systems, minimize the data it stores, improve disclosures of how it uses data and maintain disclosures and websites about its security practices. “We do not, nor have we ever, sold data,” a Plaid spokesperson said. “We make our role and practices clear, and provide services that give consumers control […]

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Courts order handover of breach forensic reports in trend welcomed by consumers, feared by defendants

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In the past year, three judges have ordered companies that suffered data breaches to hand over internal forensic reports on how the incident happened — a trend that could lend new insights into incidents where consumers’ personal data is exposed, at the expense of companies that want to keep that information to themselves.  In July, a judge ordered the Rutter’s convenience store chain to deliver a forensic report on its data breach to attorneys in a class action suit brought by store customers. It was the kind of decision that could shed light on whether the company neglected cyber defenses leading up to a breach that affected customer credit card data at roughly 70 stores over the course of nine months.   A judge ruled in May 2020 that Capital One would need to provide a forensic report to attorneys for customers who sued the bank over a 2019 incident in […]

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US blames China for Microsoft hacking, ransomware attacks as part of global condemnation

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The U.S. and its allies on Monday blamed China for exploiting flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server that enabled worldwide ransomware attacks on tens of thousands of victims. It was part of a multi-front response Monday from the European Union, NATO U.S. intelligence partners that included the announcement of charges against four Chinese hackers that the Justice Department said worked on behalf of Beijing to breach U.S. companies and institutions over a span of seven years. For the first time, the U.S. government also accused the Chinese government of employing criminal hackers who have conducted criminal attacks. U.S. government agencies also released a technical report Monday, first reported by CyberScoop, that warned of China’s ongoing appetite for targeting the defense, medical, semiconductor and other industries to steal intellectual property. “No one action can change China’s behavior in cyberspace and neither can just one country acting on its own,” a senior administration […]

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Houston man sentenced to 7 years for attempted $2 million romance scam

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A U.S. federal judge sentenced a Nigerian national to 87 months in prison for his role in trying to steal more than $2 million from victims via romance scams and spoofed email requests for wire transfer payments. The judge on Wednesday also ordered Akhabue Ehis Onoimoimilin, who lives in Houston, to pay back nearly $900,000 to victims of the money laundering scheme to which he pleaded guilty. The indictment in the case indicates that Onoimoimilin and a co-defendant, whose name is redacted, caused $1.7 million in actual losses from the scheme. Onoimoimilin’s role involved opening bank accounts in the name of “David Harrison” to launder money for co-conspirators. Law enforcement identified more than $400,000 in attempted losses in the accounts, for which Onoimoimilin received 10 to 15% of the funds. Onoimoimilin opened the accounts in 2015, according to prosecutors. The indictment offers few details on the romance and business email […]

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DOJ seizes $2.3 million in cryptocurrency payments from Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack

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The Justice Department announced Monday that it had retrieved $2.3 million in cryptocurrency payments Colonial Pipeline made in the DarkSide ransomware attack. In May, Colonial — which delivers an estimated 45% of fuel consumed on the East Coast — paid its attackers $4.4 million worth of cryptocurrency in an incident that propelled ransomware into visibility it didn’t previously have in the U.S. On Monday, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the department got some of that payment back, DOJ officials said at a news conference. “The sophisticated use of technology to hold businesses and even whole cities hostage for profit is a decidedly 21st century challenge — but the old adage ‘follow the money’ still applies,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said. “Today we turned the tables on DarkSide.” It’s not the first time DOJ has seized cryptocurrency […]

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FBI employee indicted for stealing classified info on FBI cybersecurity work

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A federal grand jury has charged an FBI employee for stealing classified documents and keeping them in her home between 2004 and 2017, the FBI announced Friday. The employee, Kendra Kingsley, allegedly took documents that detailed the FBI’s sources and methods the FBI uses to counter cyber threats, as well as those it uses in its counterterrorism and counterintelligence work, according to the indictment. Some of the documents detail specifics of investigations in multiple field offices, details on human sources and gaps in intelligence about foreign intelligence services, according to the indictment. The documents also detail technical capabilities the FBI uses in counterintelligence and counterterrorism work. In some cases, the documents contained information on al Qaeda members and emerging terrorism threats in Africa, as well as a suspected associate of Osama bin Laden, the FBI said. Kingsley worked for the FBI’s Kansas City division as an intelligence analyst, but was […]

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Russian scammer ‘Kusok,’ who stole $1.5 million via tax fraud, sentenced to 5 years

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A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a Russian man to five years in prison for his role in a scheme to use malicious software to steal the equivalent of $1.5 million in tax returns meant for American taxpayers.  Anton Bogdanov, 35, worked as part of a small crew that used vulnerabilities in accounting software to redirect tax refunds into their own accounts. By logging into the software, Bogdanov and his associates would access customer information and change the recipient information, directing money from the Internal Revenue Service to debit cards under their control, according to an indictment.  Bogdanov, who was better known by the alias “Kusok,” lived in Russia during the crime spree, and would take a cut of the stolen money. He was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand in November 2018 while waiting to board a flight to Russia, becoming one of a number of accused cybercriminals whom U.S. […]

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DeepDotWeb boss pleads guilty to laundering millions

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The administrator of a dark web marketplace that served as a gateway for purchasing heroin, firearms and hacking tools pleaded guilty to money laundering charges on Wednesday. The Justice Department said that Tal Prihar administered DeepDotWeb, where he received $8.4 million in kickbacks from dark web marketplaces for providing prospective customers with direct links to those sites, which sold illegal goods but weren’t easily found via search engines. When law enforcement indicted Prihar and an alleged co-conspirator in 2019, authorities hailed it as “the single most significant law enforcement disruption of the Darknet to date.” French law enforcement captured Prihar, an Israeli native who had lived in Brazil. Israeli law enforcement arrested the alleged co-owner of the site, Michael Phan, who handled day-to-day operations. U.S. authorities previously seized DeepDotWeb. “For six years, DeepDotWeb was a gateway to facilitate the illegal purchase of items to include dangerous drugs, weapons, and malicious […]

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IT consultant sentenced to 2 years in revenge-hacking case

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A U.S. judge has sentenced a man to two years in prison for hacking into a company and deleting 1,200 Microsoft user accounts as part of a revenge plot. Deepanshu Kher had worked for an IT consulting firm that deployed him to a Carlsbad, Calif. company in 2017 to help it migrate to Microsoft Office 360. The company provided bad reviews to Kher’s employer, which then pulled him from the assignment and later fired him, according to a Justice Department news release, which named neither Kher’s employer or the firm he pleaded guilty to hacking. After his firing, Kher, an Indian national, returned there and in 2018 accessed the California company’s server to delete nearly all of its 1,500 Microsoft user accounts, prompting the firm to have to completely shutter operations for two days. It then experienced longer-lasting troubles that stretched for three months. “They could not access their email, […]

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Robocalls keep spamming Americans, in part because of their cyber tools

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After a surprising lull at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, phone scammers are back, and showing signs of overlapping more and more with text messages and cyber elements. Scammers are combining phone calls with tricks to circumvent two-factor authentication, using information they obtain online to make more targeted calls and, in some cases, mimicking the attack methods of hackers, government and industry officials say. Phone scams that merge with other methods are growing more frequent and difficult to contend with, said Connecticut Attorney General William Tong. “I think it’s common and it’s dangerous, particularly the way that they’re able to cloak themselves or convince you that you need to respond to a particular call or email,” he said. Internet technology has helped fuel a record number of robocalls thanks to the advent of voice-over IP, a tool that made mass calling convenient and more affordable. Estimates vary, but most […]

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