Unprecedented 25-Year Sentence Sought for TJX Hacker: Via Threat Level.

Computer hacker Albert Gonzalez deserves a quarter-century behind bars for leading a gang of cyberthieves who stole tens of millions of credit and debit card numbers from a transaction processor and several giant retail chains, federal prosecutors argued in a court filing Thursday night.

“[T]he sentences would be the longest ever imposed in an identity theft case and among the longest imposed for a financial crime, which is appropriate because Gonzalez was at the center of the largest and most costly series of identity thefts in the nation’s history,” wrote Boston-based Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann. “He knowingly victimized a group of people whose population exceeded that of many major cities and some states.”

The government also disputed a defense claim that Gonzalez suffers from Asperger’s disorder, a mild form of autism that was grounds for a slightly reduced sentence in a previous hacking prosecution.

Gonzalez, 28, is set for sentencing next week on three indictments covering virtually every headline-making bank-card theft in recent years, including intrusions at TJX, DSW Shoe Warehouse, Office Max, Hannaford Brothers, 7-Eleven, and Heartland Payment Systems, which alone exposed magstripe data on 130 million credit and debit cards. He performed the intrusions while an informant for the Secret Service.

The hacker’s plea agreements contemplate a total prison term of between 17 and 25 years. [ Read more ... ]

Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely: Via Threat Level.

More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.

Police with Austin’s High Tech Crime Unit on Wednesday arrested 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former Texas Auto Center employee who was laid off last month, and allegedly sought revenge by bricking the cars sold from the dealership’s four Austin-area lots.

“We initially dismissed it as mechanical failure,” says Texas Auto Center manager Martin Garcia. “We started having a rash of up to a hundred customers at one time complaining. Some customers complained of the horns going off in the middle of the night. The only option they had was to remove the battery.”

The dealership used a system called Webtech Plus as an alternative to repossessing vehicles that haven’t been paid for. Operated by Cleveland-based Pay Technologies, the system lets car dealers install a small black box under vehicle dashboards that responds to commands issued through a central website, and relayed over a wireless pager network. The dealer can disable a car’s ignition system, or trigger the horn to begin honking, as a reminder that a payment is due. The system will not stop a running vehicle. [ Read more ... ]

Feds: TSA Worker Tried to Sabotage Terror Database: Via Threat Level.

A former Transportation Security Administration contractor is being charged in Colorado for allegedly injecting malicious code into a government network used for screening airport security workers and others.

The malicious code, a logic bomb installed last October, was designed to cause damage and disrupt data on servers on an undisclosed date but was caught by other workers before it delivered its payload.

Douglas James Duchak, 46, had worked as a data analyst at the TSA’s Colorado Springs Operations Center, or CSOC, since 2004. The CSOC is used to vet people who have “access to sensitive information and secure areas of the nation’s transportation network,” according to the indictment. A source involved in the case said this involved screening of both passengers and workers at airports and other transportation facilities.

He pleaded not guilty in a Denver federal court on Wednesday and was released on a $25,000 unsecured bond. The indictment did not say whether the malware was crafted to erase or alter data, or simply disable servers.

The CSOC network stores updated information from the government’s terrorist watchlist as well as criminal histories from the U.S. Marshal’s Service Warrant Information Network. [ Read more ... ]

Wiseguys Indicted in $20 Million Online Ticket Ring: Via Threat Level.

A ring of ticket brokers was indicted Monday in connection to an elaborate hacking scheme that used bots and other fraudulent means to purchase more than 1 million tickets for concerts, sporting events and other events.

The defendants made more than $28 million in profits from the re-sale of the tickets between 2002 and 2009.

According to the federal indictment (.pdf) in New Jersey, the defendants set up a nationwide network through which they were able to impersonate thousands of individual ticket buyers, defeating the security and fraud measures that online ticket vendors such as Ticketmaster, Musictoday and Tickets.com put in place to thwart automated ticket buying.

The defendants did business as Wiseguy Tickets and Seats of San Francisco, and used two shell companies called Smaug and Platinum Technologies to purchase IP blocks and rent servers to conduct the attacks. [ Read more ... ]

How To Manage (and Protect) Your Online Reputation: Via Forbes.com .

When Megan Maloney lost her job at a Detroit auto supplier last April, she made sure her online reputation was as strong as the image she would present in person to prospective employers. She Googled herself to check for unflattering links. Then she changed her Facebook privacy setting so no one could see beyond her profile picture. She updated her profile on LinkedIn.

Maloney's instinct was right: When she landed a job in September, her new bosses admitted they had researched her online. They told me that they had checked Facebook," says Maloney, 32, now a business development manager in Milwaukee. "I had posted a photo of me wearing a T-shirt that said 'Unemployed,' and they thought that I showed the right kind of personality for a sales job. They liked that I was on LinkedIn, because it's helpful for leads and networking."

Managing your online reputation is a critical step in landing a new job. According to a recent survey by business networking organization ExecuNet, 90% of recruiters used a search engine to learn more about candidates and 46% of recruiters had eliminated a candidate based on information they found online. Self-Googling isn't an act of narcissism; it's a smart way to determine whether your online personality jives with how you want the world to view you. [ Read more ... ]

Our human rights vs. The Others: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

(updated below - Update II)

Ten American Baptists were arrested two weeks ago in Haiti on charges that they exploited the chaos in that country by attempting to smuggle 33 young Haitian children across the border without permission -- either to bring them to a life of Christianity or (as some evidence suggests) to filter them into a child trafficking ring.  National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez is deeply upset by the plight of at least one of the detained Americans, Jim Allen, whom she contends (based exclusively on his family's claims) is innocent.  Lopez demands that the State Department do more to "insist" upon Allen's release, and -- most amazingly of all -- complains about the conditions of his detention.   She has the audacity to cite a Human Rights Watch description of prison conditions in Haiti as "inhumane."  Lopez complains that Allen was waterboarded, stripped, frozen and beaten has "hypertension," was shipped thousands of miles away to a secret black site beyond the reach of the ICRC and then rendered to Jordan allowed to speak to his wife only once in the first ten days of his confinement, and was consigned to years in an island-prison cage with no charges denied his choice of counsel for a few days (though he is now duly represented in Haitian courts by a large team of American lawyers). [ Read more ... ]

Record 13-Year Sentence for Hacker Max Vision: Via Threat Level.

PITTSBURGH — A skilled San Francisco-based computer intruder was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison Friday for stealing nearly two million credit card numbers from banks, businesses and other hackers — receiving the longest hacking sentence in U.S. history.

Max Ray Vision, 37, was also ordered to pay $27.5 million in restitution, and to serve five years under court supervision following his release, during which time he’ll be allowed to use computers only for legitimate employment or education.

Vision, who changed his name from Max Butler shortly before his arrest, ran an online forum for thousands of identity thieves called CardersMarket, where he sold credit card magstripe data to the underground for about $20 a card. He was caught with 1.8 million stolen credit card numbers belonging to 1,000 different banks, who tallied the fraudulent charges on the cards at $86.4 million. [ Read more ... ]

Social Security numbers found lying in street: Via Chicago Tribune.

Hundreds of sensitive, intact documents — including W-2 forms, investment account balances and job applications — were inexplicably swirling around Touhy Avenue and Eastview Drive on Thursday afternoon. After being tipped to the airborne paper trail, the Tribune contacted some of the people and companies listed on the documents.

None of them knew how the papers could have ended up in the street.

"I am pretty much disgusted with this," said Cruz, 47, of Chicago, who was notified that at least 17 documents with her Social Security number (the apparent remnants of an old job application) had been retrieved. "All of that is sensitive information. You would think your stuff is secure." [ Read more ... ]

Guilty Plea in ‘Anonymous’ DDoS Scientology Attack: Via Threat Level.

A Nebraska man is pleading guilty in federal court to a computer-disruption charge for his role in the 2008 distributed denial-of-service attack that temporarily shuttered Church of Scientology websites, the authorities said Tuesday.

Los Angeles federal prosecutors said Brian Thomas Mettenbrink, 20, signed a plea agreement Friday admitting his role in the January 2008 attack (.pdf) –- bringing to two the number of defendants convicted in Anonymous’ attack on Scientology. Next week, Mettenbrink is expected to officially enter his plea, which carries a year sentence, prosecutors said.

“He took their websites down,” Assistant United States Attorney Erik M. Silber said in a brief telephone interview from Los Angeles. [ Read more ... ]

Mikey Hicks, 8, Can’t Get Off U.S. Terror Watch List: Via NYTimes.com .

The Transportation Security Administration, under scrutiny after last month’s bombing attempt, has on its Web site a “mythbuster” that tries to reassure the public.

Myth: The No-Fly list includes an 8-year-old boy.

Buster: No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list.

“Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.” [ Read more ... ]

Court Reduces ‘Shocking’ File Sharing Award: Via Threat Level.

A federal judge on Friday reduced a $1.92 million file sharing verdict to $54,000 after concluding the award for infringing 24 songs was “shocking.”

A federal jury in June found Jammie Thomas-Rasset liable in what at the time was the nation’s only Recording Industry Association of America file sharing case against an individual to go to trial. The Minnesota federal jury dinged her $1.92 million for infringing 24 songs. She asked the judge to set aside or reduce that $80,000 per song in damages.

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis agreed on Friday, and said the RIAA may have a retrial if it does not accept his ruling.

“The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music,” Davis wrote. “Moreover, although plaintiffs were not required to prove their actual damages, statutory damages must bear some relation to actual damages.” [ Read more ... ]

Bank Thieves Foiled by GPS-Spiked Cash: Via Threat Level.

Forget exploding dye packs. Three thieves who made off with about $9,000 in cash from a bank were thwarted by a GPS device inserted in the cash that led authorities straight to their door, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Timothy Rucker, 33, Phillip Griffen, 31, and Brandon Barnes, 25, entered a branch of the TCF Bank on Dec. 30 with their faces concealed and pointed a gun at a teller, demanding cash.

The three made off with a nylon bag full of money. But unknown to them, the bag also contained two GPS-tracking devices hidden among the bills.

Signals from the devices led police to the home of one of the suspect’s parents, where the thieves were arrested about an hour after the robbery. [ Read more ... ]

Alleged Ponzi Mastermind Stanford Pwned in Antigua: Via Threat Level.

In early 2008, while federal investigators were busy looking into disgraced financier Robert Allen Stanford for his part in an alleged $8 billion fraudulent investment scheme, Eastern European hackers were quietly hoovering up tens of thousands of customer financial records from the Bank of Antigua, an institution formerly owned by the Stanford Group.

According to a fraud investigator with firsthand knowledge of the break-in, the hackers responsible infiltrated a component of the Stanford Group’s network by exploiting vulnerabilities in the company’s web servers and databases. On the condition of anonymity, the investigator shared with this author files recovered from the breach, which were stored in plain text for at least several weeks on a website controlled by the attackers. This source said he forwarded the same information on to the FBI shortly after discovering it in early 2008.

Once inside Stanford’s network, the unidentified hackers appear to have swiped the credentials from an internal network administrator. They soon had downloaded the user names and password hashes for more than 1,000 employees of Stanford Financial, Stanford Group, Stanford Trust and Stanford International Bank. [ Read more ... ]

The Decade’s 10 Most Dastardly Cybercrimes: Via Threat Level.

It was the decade of the mega-heist, when stolen credit card magstripe tracks became the pork bellies of a new underground marketplace, Eastern European hackers turned malware writing into an art, and a nasty new crop of purpose-driven computer worms struck dread in the heart of America.

Now that the zero days are behind us, it’s time to reflect on the most ingenious, destructive or groundbreaking cybercrimes of the first 10 years of the new millennium. [ Read more ... ]

Former Morgan Stanley Coder Gets 2 Years in Prison for TJX Hack: Via Threat Level.

The two great friends talked every day and shared information about all of their exploits — sexual, narcotic and hacking — according to prosecutors. Now another thing they’ll have to share information about is their experience in federal prison.

While accused TJX hacker kingpin Albert Gonzalez awaits a possible sentence of 17 years or more in prison, one of his best friends and accomplices was sentenced on Tuesday in Boston to two years for his role in what the feds are calling “the largest identity theft in our nation’s history.”

Stephen Watt, a 25-year-old former Morgan Stanley software engineer, pleaded guilty last December to creating a custom sniffing program dubbed “blabla” that Gonzalez and other hackers used to siphon millions of credit and debit card numbers from TJX’s network. The breach cost TJX $200 million, according to its 2009 SEC filing. [ Read more ... ]

7-Eleven Hack From Russia Led to ATM Looting in New York: Via Threat Level.

Flashback, early 2008: Citibank officials are witnessing a huge spike in fraudulent withdrawals from New York area ATMs — $180,000 is stolen from cash machines on the Upper East Side in just three days.  After a stakeout, police arrest one man walking out of a bank with thousands of dollars in cash and 12 reprogrammed cards. A lucky traffic stop catches two more plunderers who’d driven in from Michigan. Another pair are arrested after trying to mug an undercover FBI agent on the street for a magstripe encoder. In the end, there are 10 arrests and at least $2 million dollars stolen.

The wellspring of the dramatic megaheist turns out to be more prosaic than imagined: It started with a breach of the public website of America’s most famous convenience store chain: 7-Eleven.com. [ Read more ... ]

The Joys of Airstrikes and Anonymity: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

Each time the U.S. bombs a new location in the Muslim world, the same pattern emerges.  First, officials from the U.S. or allied governments run to their favorite media outlet to claim -- anonymously -- that some big, bad, notorious, "top" Al Qaeda leader "may have been" or "likely was" killed in the strike, and this constitutes a "stinging" or "devastating" blow against the Terrorist group.  These compliant media outlets then sensationalistically trumpet that claim as the dominant theme of their "reporting" on the attack, drowning out every other issue.  [ Read more ... ]

Albert Gonzalez Enters Plea Agreement in Heartland, Hannaford Cases: Via Threat Level.

Albert Gonzalez, who has admitted hacking into TJX and other companies, has filed a plea agreement in charges that he breached Heartland Payment Systems, Hannaford, 7-Eleven and two other companies.

Under the terms of the agreement, Gonzalez, a former Secret Service informant, will plead guilty to two counts of conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers, and to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors have agreed to seek a sentence of no more than 25 years, to run concurrent with his sentence in two other pending cases. Gonzalez had agreed to ask the court for no less than 17 years in prison.

Gonzalez is currently facing a sentence of between 15 and 25 years in two combined cases out of Massachusetts and New York, involving the hacks of TJX and Dave & Buster’s restaurants. The New Jersey agreement would add two years to the minimum time he could seek. [ Read more ... ]

FBI Linguist Guilty of Leaking Classified Documents to Blog: Via Threat Level.

An Israeli-American lawyer who worked as an FBI linguist pleaded guilty Thursday to providing an unidentified blogger with classified documents derived from U.S. communications intelligence.

Shamai Kedem Leibowitz, 39, of Silver Spring, Maryland, pleaded to one felony count of disclosing to an unauthorized party five documents that were classified “secret” that he obtained through his work with the FBI.

Leibowitz leaked the documents to the unnamed blogger in April 2009. The blogger — identified as “Recipient A in court filings — then wrote a post based on the classified documents.

“As a trusted member of the FBI ranks, Leibowitz abused the trust of the FBI and the American public by using his access to classified information for his own purposes,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely in a press release. [ Read more ... ]

Cyberthief Seeks Hit Man to Kill Informant: Via Threat Level.

A convicted credit card thief and bank fraudster has pleaded guilty to solicitation of murder. He attempted to put out a contract on a federal informant.

Pavel Igorevich Valkovich, 28, admitted last week that he discussed hiring a hit man to kill the unidentified informant in a drive-by shooting. He submitted his guilty plea the first day of his trial on the murder-for-hire charge.

According to authorities, last January, Valkovich discussed paying a hitman $10,000 (.pdf) to kill the informant. In the conversation with someone he met in prison, he indicated that he wanted a silencer used in the murder. [ Read more ... ]

Office Space Actor Sues Anonymous Wikipedia Vandal: Via Threat Level.

Office Space actor Ron Livingston has filed a lawsuit against an anonymous Wikipedia editor for repeatedly altering his entry on the free encyclopedia to claim Livingston is gay.

Livingston suspects the same vandal of posing as the actor in a phony Facebook profile.

Neither Facebook nor Wikipedia are named in the suit. Under the Communications Decency Act, such sites enjoy immunity from most types of lawsuits stemming from the actions of their users.

But that does not mean the anonymous person or persons who wrote the allegedly defamatory statements are immune from being outed and hauled into court. [ Read more ... ]

Feds Charge 3 With Comcast.net Hijacking: Via Threat Level.

Three alleged members of the hacker gang Kryogeniks were hit with a federal conspiracy charge Thursday for a 2008 stunt that replaced Comcast’s homepage with a shout-out to other hackers.

Prosecutors identified Christopher Allen Lewis, 19, and James Robert Black Jr., 20, as the hackers “EBK” and “Defiant,” known for hijacking Comcast’s domain name in May of last year — a prank that took down the cable giant’s homepage and webmail service for more than five hours, and allegedly cost the company over $128,000.

Visitors to Comcast.net had been redirected to a simple page reading “KRYOGENIKS EBK and DEFIANT RoXed COMCAST sHouTz To VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven.” [ Read more ... ]

Madoff’s Coders Charged With Aiding Massive Ponzi Scheme: Via Threat Level.

Two programmers who worked for convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff have been arrested and charged with providing technical support for the massive Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of an estimated $65 billion.

Jerome O’Hara, 46, and George Perez, 43, were arrested Friday morning and charged with conspiracy for falsifying books and records for Madoff’s broker-dealer and investment businesses.

“The computer codes and random algorithms they allegedly designed served to deceive investors and regulators and concealed Madoff’s crimes,” federal prosecutor Preet Bharara said in a statement.

The two, who began working for Madoff in the early 90s, are accused of writing software in 2003 and 2004 that produced fraudulent records that were fed to U.S. regulators and a European accounting firm reviewing the firms’ work. They allegedly repeatedly revised the programs through 2006 to produce reports designed to deceive investigators. [ Read more ... ]

4 Hackers Indicted in $9.5 Million Bank Card Attack: Via Threat Level.

Four men have been indicted in Georgia on charges that they hacked into the Atlanta-based bank card processing company RBS WorldPay. They allegedly used an army of flunkies to steal $9.5 million in cash from ATM machines around the world in a span of hours.

Sergei Tsurikov, 25, of Tallinn, Estonia; Viktor Pleshchuk, 28, of St. Petersburg, Russia; Oleg Covelin, 28, of Chisinau, Moldova; and a fourth person identified only as “Hacker 3″ were indicted by a federal grand jury in what’s being described as “perhaps the most sophisticated and organized computer fraud attack ever conducted.”

The hack involved reverse-engineering PINs for payroll debit card accounts — the holy grail of bank card hacking. Another four people based in Estonia were also indicted on access-device fraud charges in connection with the hack. [ Read more ... ]

Apology for singing shop worker: Via BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Tayside and Central.

A shop assistant who was told she could not sing while she stacked shelves without a performance licence has been given an apology.

Sandra Burt, 56, who works at A&T Food store in Clackmannanshire, was warned she could be fined for her singing by the Performing Right Society (PRS).

However the organisation that collects royalties on behalf of the music industry has now reversed its stance.

They have sent Mrs Burt a bouquet of flowers and letter of apology. [ Read more ... ]