5 scenarios of the most notorious cybercrimes in history.
The Internet is increasingly becoming a stage for detective stories with their greedy villains, brave Robinhoods, chases, puzzles and quite predictable endings. In this material, we have collected 5 interesting scenarios of cybercrimes and the offline punishments that followed them.
1. ALBERT GONZALEZ may be considered the hacker of the century. The first high-profile case in his criminal career was the Shadowcrew resource, which he created together with a team of like-minded people. In this community, carders shared information about stolen credit cards, information about their owners, and also organized auctions. About 4,000 people were active on the “carder exchange,” and the FBI soon became interested in it. To avoid prison, Gonzalez had to cooperate with the authorities - from 2003 to 2004, he provided information about Shadowcrew, which led to mass arrests of its members and the closure of the community. Gonzalez even received money from the FBI for the information he provided - $75 thousand a year, but secretly he continued to engage in scams. He organized a new criminal scheme: using a sniffer program that intercepted and analyzed the traffic of company wi-fi networks, he gained access to secret data. So, after driving around the offices of the TJX Companies corporation for six months and working properly with their network, he stole more than 40 million bank card numbers and data on their owners for subsequent resale.
TOP 5 COUNTRIES WITH THE HIGHEST CYBER CRIME RATES:
USA 23%
China 9%
Germany 6%
England 5%
Brazil 4%
ALREADY IN MAY 2008, Gonzalez and 10 of his “colleagues” were arrested during a special FBI operation. It later turned out that Gonzalez was involved in organizing the hacking of the Heartland Payment System (5th largest payment system in the US and 9th in the world), the ATM system of the retailer 7-Eleven and the Hannaford Bros. retail chain. In total, Gonzalez took part in the theft and resale of data on 170 million cards, thanks to which he lived in grand style, spending money on cars, apartments in Miami, expensive watches and parties. A search of his home turned up half a million in cash and another $1 million was buried in his parents' yard.
GONZALEZ IS CURRENTLY serving a 20-year sentence at a federal correctional facility in Michigan. It is scheduled to be released in 2025.
2. ON DECEMBER 21, 2012, AMERICANS Elvis Rafael Rodriguez and Emir Yasser Yehe, together with an international group of cybercriminals, staged one of the largest crimes in history. They hacked the Indian and American databases of Mastercard and Visa prepaid debit bank cards. Then the attackers canceled the restrictions on cash withdrawals on the accounts and, using changed PIN codes, withdrew $5 million from ATMs in 26 countries (including Russia). Two months later, the criminals repeated the operation, withdrawing $40 million from ATMs. Fraudsters falsified the cards and entered the data of clients of banks in the United Arab Emirates and Oman on them, since Middle Eastern banks often allow their clients to keep large sums on debit cards and are not very strict about their movements.
THE CRIMINAL TEAM WAS ASSISTED BY at least 100 people in different countries, who made 36 thousand withdrawals. On May 9, 8 people were arrested in New York on suspicion of involvement in this crime.
AFTER THE THEFT, some (obviously not the wisest) criminals were photographed with wads of stolen cash, newly acquired Rolex watches and expensive cars.
IT IS REPORTED THAT THE ORGANIZERS who developed the complex scheme and the hackers who were directly involved in hacking the banking system were located outside the United States and received the lion's share of the funds. Those who cashed out earned no more than 20% of the total catch.
3. VLADIMIR LEVIN is an iconic figure in the field of information security. He owes this status, among other things, to his criminal activities. In 1994, Levin penetrated the internal network of the American bank Citibank, hacking the bank's analog modem connection and gaining access to several accounts belonging to corporate clients.
HE, ALONG WITH A GROUP OF ASSISTANTS, managed to scatter about $10 million into accounts in the USA, Finland, Germany, Israel and the Netherlands, but his accomplices were arrested, and in March 1995, Levin himself was caught at a London airport. The hacker managed to cash out only $400 thousand; the bank was able to return the rest of the stolen money.
UNDER AMERICAN LAW, Levin faced up to 60 years in prison, but the prosecution and defense entered into a “pre-trial agreement” and he was sentenced to only 36 months in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Over the course of a year, cybercriminals cost the 24 largest countries about $388 billion . 431 million people suffer from their actions .
4. IN NOVEMBER 2011, THE FBI ANNOUNCED it had uncovered the largest cybercrime in history. An unprecedented investigation, carried out jointly by international law enforcement agencies and private enterprises, has identified seven Estonians and a Russian citizen who organized a giant botnet computer network.
DURING THEIR CRIMINAL OPERATION, dubbed Ghost Click, more than four million computers around the world, including those belonging to NASA, were infected. The group distributed the DNSChanger virus, which changed the addresses of domain servers, redirecting users to the requested websites through servers controlled by criminals. For four years, the group redirected their web browsers to advertising links that paid “fraudulent clicks” to the defendants and their clients. As a result, the team was able to earn more than $14 million and cause significant damage to large online stores, whose total losses amount to billions. Six people were arrested in the case and face more than 85 years in total.
5. ANOTHER CRIMINAL SCHEME invented in the post-Soviet space in the mid-2000s is the “money mule” system. First, groups of scammers use Trojan horses such as Zeus and URLZone, as well as keyloggers (programs that record keystrokes on a computer's keyboard), to hack into the computer systems of small businesses that use online banking. Credentials are stolen and accounts are naturally emptied using money mules. These are unsuspecting people who are hired for supposedly legal work; in reality, they act as financial intermediaries, and their bank accounts are used to transfer money from the victims' accounts to the accounts of the attackers.
ACCORDING TO THIS SCHEME, a gang of Ukrainians Evgeniy Kulibaba and Yuriy Konovalenko stole $30 million worldwide from October 2009 to September 2010, including 6 million pounds from UK financial institutions. They organized an agent network to transfer stolen funds from Britain to Eastern Europe. Kulibaba, from the territory of Ukraine, organized the spread of viruses and cleaned out accounts, and Konovalenko directed the actions of the “mules.” The gang leaders received 4 years and 8 months, many ordinary members also went to prison.
Last year, 44% of Internet users over 18 years of age experienced online scams.
(c) http://www.lookatme.ru/mag/live/interweb/193411-cybercrime
The Internet is increasingly becoming a stage for detective stories with their greedy villains, brave Robinhoods, chases, puzzles and quite predictable endings. In this material, we have collected 5 interesting scenarios of cybercrimes and the offline punishments that followed them.
1. ALBERT GONZALEZ may be considered the hacker of the century. The first high-profile case in his criminal career was the Shadowcrew resource, which he created together with a team of like-minded people. In this community, carders shared information about stolen credit cards, information about their owners, and also organized auctions. About 4,000 people were active on the “carder exchange,” and the FBI soon became interested in it. To avoid prison, Gonzalez had to cooperate with the authorities - from 2003 to 2004, he provided information about Shadowcrew, which led to mass arrests of its members and the closure of the community. Gonzalez even received money from the FBI for the information he provided - $75 thousand a year, but secretly he continued to engage in scams. He organized a new criminal scheme: using a sniffer program that intercepted and analyzed the traffic of company wi-fi networks, he gained access to secret data. So, after driving around the offices of the TJX Companies corporation for six months and working properly with their network, he stole more than 40 million bank card numbers and data on their owners for subsequent resale.
TOP 5 COUNTRIES WITH THE HIGHEST CYBER CRIME RATES:
USA 23%
China 9%
Germany 6%
England 5%
Brazil 4%
ALREADY IN MAY 2008, Gonzalez and 10 of his “colleagues” were arrested during a special FBI operation. It later turned out that Gonzalez was involved in organizing the hacking of the Heartland Payment System (5th largest payment system in the US and 9th in the world), the ATM system of the retailer 7-Eleven and the Hannaford Bros. retail chain. In total, Gonzalez took part in the theft and resale of data on 170 million cards, thanks to which he lived in grand style, spending money on cars, apartments in Miami, expensive watches and parties. A search of his home turned up half a million in cash and another $1 million was buried in his parents' yard.
GONZALEZ IS CURRENTLY serving a 20-year sentence at a federal correctional facility in Michigan. It is scheduled to be released in 2025.
2. ON DECEMBER 21, 2012, AMERICANS Elvis Rafael Rodriguez and Emir Yasser Yehe, together with an international group of cybercriminals, staged one of the largest crimes in history. They hacked the Indian and American databases of Mastercard and Visa prepaid debit bank cards. Then the attackers canceled the restrictions on cash withdrawals on the accounts and, using changed PIN codes, withdrew $5 million from ATMs in 26 countries (including Russia). Two months later, the criminals repeated the operation, withdrawing $40 million from ATMs. Fraudsters falsified the cards and entered the data of clients of banks in the United Arab Emirates and Oman on them, since Middle Eastern banks often allow their clients to keep large sums on debit cards and are not very strict about their movements.
THE CRIMINAL TEAM WAS ASSISTED BY at least 100 people in different countries, who made 36 thousand withdrawals. On May 9, 8 people were arrested in New York on suspicion of involvement in this crime.
AFTER THE THEFT, some (obviously not the wisest) criminals were photographed with wads of stolen cash, newly acquired Rolex watches and expensive cars.
IT IS REPORTED THAT THE ORGANIZERS who developed the complex scheme and the hackers who were directly involved in hacking the banking system were located outside the United States and received the lion's share of the funds. Those who cashed out earned no more than 20% of the total catch.
John Draper and his friends from Apple
1970S: John Draper, aka Cap'n Crunch, discovered that a toy whistle made from a box of Cornflakes produced a sound at the same frequency as the telephone dial tone. He called a long-distance number and, while dialing, blew the whistle. This signal informed the system that Draper had hung up. Thus, the line was considered free, and all further actions were not recorded by the telephone system. After these experiments, Draper, together with his friends Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, created the Blue Box device, which allows you to simulate the sounds of a telephone network and make free calls around the world.3. VLADIMIR LEVIN is an iconic figure in the field of information security. He owes this status, among other things, to his criminal activities. In 1994, Levin penetrated the internal network of the American bank Citibank, hacking the bank's analog modem connection and gaining access to several accounts belonging to corporate clients.
HE, ALONG WITH A GROUP OF ASSISTANTS, managed to scatter about $10 million into accounts in the USA, Finland, Germany, Israel and the Netherlands, but his accomplices were arrested, and in March 1995, Levin himself was caught at a London airport. The hacker managed to cash out only $400 thousand; the bank was able to return the rest of the stolen money.
UNDER AMERICAN LAW, Levin faced up to 60 years in prison, but the prosecution and defense entered into a “pre-trial agreement” and he was sentenced to only 36 months in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Over the course of a year, cybercriminals cost the 24 largest countries about $388 billion . 431 million people suffer from their actions .
4. IN NOVEMBER 2011, THE FBI ANNOUNCED it had uncovered the largest cybercrime in history. An unprecedented investigation, carried out jointly by international law enforcement agencies and private enterprises, has identified seven Estonians and a Russian citizen who organized a giant botnet computer network.
DURING THEIR CRIMINAL OPERATION, dubbed Ghost Click, more than four million computers around the world, including those belonging to NASA, were infected. The group distributed the DNSChanger virus, which changed the addresses of domain servers, redirecting users to the requested websites through servers controlled by criminals. For four years, the group redirected their web browsers to advertising links that paid “fraudulent clicks” to the defendants and their clients. As a result, the team was able to earn more than $14 million and cause significant damage to large online stores, whose total losses amount to billions. Six people were arrested in the case and face more than 85 years in total.
The first hacker in history
The first hacker can be considered the magician Neville Maskelyne, who in 1903, at the request of the Eastern Telegraph Company, spoiled the presentation of wireless data transmission by John Fleming and Guglielmo Marconi, showing publicly that the transmission could be interfered with. A projection lamp in the theater where the event took place conveyed in Morse code the message “Nonsense” and rhymes that “one scoundrel Italian is planning to deceive everyone.”5. ANOTHER CRIMINAL SCHEME invented in the post-Soviet space in the mid-2000s is the “money mule” system. First, groups of scammers use Trojan horses such as Zeus and URLZone, as well as keyloggers (programs that record keystrokes on a computer's keyboard), to hack into the computer systems of small businesses that use online banking. Credentials are stolen and accounts are naturally emptied using money mules. These are unsuspecting people who are hired for supposedly legal work; in reality, they act as financial intermediaries, and their bank accounts are used to transfer money from the victims' accounts to the accounts of the attackers.
ACCORDING TO THIS SCHEME, a gang of Ukrainians Evgeniy Kulibaba and Yuriy Konovalenko stole $30 million worldwide from October 2009 to September 2010, including 6 million pounds from UK financial institutions. They organized an agent network to transfer stolen funds from Britain to Eastern Europe. Kulibaba, from the territory of Ukraine, organized the spread of viruses and cleaned out accounts, and Konovalenko directed the actions of the “mules.” The gang leaders received 4 years and 8 months, many ordinary members also went to prison.
Last year, 44% of Internet users over 18 years of age experienced online scams.
Tips for beginners:
- To steal money from someone else's account, you will have to infect the victim's computer with a virus through which you can establish remote access.
- By waiting for an unsuspecting user to log into your bank account, you can quietly transfer money to your fake account in the Cayman Islands.
- An easier way is to send the victim a fake letter on behalf of his bank asking him to log into his account and change some information.
- The links from the letter, of course, should lead to the “fake” bank website that you created in advance.
- When the user enters his logins, passwords, card number, PIN codes and other data there, his money is almost in your pocket.
- Next, you can link your card details to your payment system wallet (so you can then pay for goods online) or to your mobile phone.
- To cash out money from a mobile phone, you will have to hire a dropper - a figurehead in whose name the mobile phone number is registered. He needs to be persuaded to go to the cellular operator’s office with an application to receive money from his mobile account.
(c) http://www.lookatme.ru/mag/live/interweb/193411-cybercrime
