Tag archive: cyber crime

News of yet another computer security breach has emerged which appears to be so monumental that the word ‘hack’ seems inadequate – how about a mega-hack? Or simply a thwack? According to a Reuters report on Wednesday, security company McAfee believes it has uncovered the largest series of cyber attacks yet, with 72 big organizations from around the world hit. McAfee said it thought a single “state actor” perpetrated the intrusions, and… Read More

The Department of Justice and FBI have scored a big victory against a major international cyber theft ring suspected of stealing more than $100 million. The thieves used malware called Coreflood to form a network of 2.3 million remotely controlled zombie pcs, also known as a botnet. The botnet snagged banking credentials and other sensitive data, which was used to steal large amounts of funds through wire and bank fraud. The botnet's… Read More

According to new court documents Sony has filed, infamous PS3 hacker George “Geohot” Hotz has fled the country. As we recently reported, Sony was granted access to Hotz’s PayPal records and through this data was able to determine that the alleged PS3 jailbreaker is hunkering down in South America. The document states that “Hotz is now in South America, an excuse for why he will not immediately provide components of his hard drives as requested…… Read More

A new study from Internet security giant Symantec shows cybercrime affects everyone everywhere, and US Internet users are particularly vulnerable. Almost three-quarters of US Internet users are cybercrime victims, and the US ranks third on the list of countries attacked the most. When looked at globally, the number is still eye-opening, affecting about two-thirds of Internet users. Cybercrime includes computer viruses, online credit card fraud,… Read More

Comcast Corp. wants to enlist its customers in a fight against a huge problem for Internet providers — the armies of infected personal computers, known as “botnets,” that suck up bandwidth by sending spam and facilitating cybercrime. The country's largest provider of high-speed Internet to homes started testing a service this week in Denver in which Comcast sends customers a pop-up message in their Web browsers if their… Read More

Cyber criminals are increasingly targeting small and medium-sized businesses that don't have the resources to keep updating their computer security, according to federal authorities. Many of the attacks are being waged by organized cyber groups that are based abroad, and they are able to steal not only credit card numbers, but personal information — including Social Security numbers — of the card holders, said Michael Merritt, assistant… Read More