The latest in this strung of busts is the music piracy ground RNS or Rabid Neurosis, very eminent in the scene in the late 90s/early 2000s.

With P2P and people ripping stuff themselves, is ‘the scene’ dying or are most releases repackaged group releases? I’ve been out of the whole 0day warez/racing/fxp thing for a long time, so I honestly have no idea.

Six men have been accused of running the world’s most prolific music piracy ring, an online crew federal prosecutors allege delivered more than 25,000 copyrighted albums, often before they were officially released.

As members of Rabid Neurosis, or RNS as the group was called, they tapped insiders at music retailers, radio stations, and CD manufacturing plants, who were able to get their hands on music titles before their commercial release in the US. In other cases, they turned to affiliates elsewhere in the world, who were able to supply music that was not yet available in America.

“These reproductions were done for the benefit of the members of RNS and other affiliated piracy groups, in that, by getting a reputation for providing pirated materials that were previously unavailable on the piracy scene, RNS members were granted access to massive libraries of pirated music, video games, software and movies,” prosecutors alleged in court documents filed Wednesday.

They have an impressive record though often releasing full retail albums before they were for sale! They stopped around 2007 tho, I guess that’s when Bit Torrent and p2p was really taking off.

25,000 albums is a serious number though I’d guess their restitution is definitely going to be in the millions. But then historically the fines given out for piracy cases has just been completely ridiculous.

The most likely outcome, 6 more people filling for bankruptcy.

The claim of personal benefit is important, since sentencing guidelines frequently require a showing that copyright infringers financially gained from their activities.

Wednesday’s indictment, filed in US District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia, named Adil R. Cassim, 29, of Granada Hills, California, the alleged leader of the group, Matthew D. Chow, 28, of Missouri City, Texas, Bennie L. Glover, 35, of Shelby, North Carolina, an employee of a CD production plant, and Edward Mohan II, 46, of Baltimore.

Each was charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. If convicted each faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000, in addition to a possible order to pay restitution.

Patrick L. Saunders, 30, of Brooklyn, New York, was charged in August and pleaded guilty on Tuesday to one count of copyright infringement. James A. Dockery, 39, of Mooresboro, North Carolina was charged on Tuesday.

They had an impressive network of contacts with people from retail outlets, cd printing factories and radio stations. All the people who get tracks and whole albums before they hit the streets.

I’m sure there will be plenty more similar cases to follow in the near future.

Source: The Register

The legal system has ticked along and now they have to stand up for their charges, which are spiraling as more and more cases are linked to them.

Albert “Segvec” Gonzalez has been indicted by a federal grand jury in New Jersey — along with two unnamed Russian conspirators — on charges of hacking into Heartland Payment Systems, the New Jersey-based card processing company, as well as Hannaford Brothers, 7-Eleven and two unnamed national retailers, according to the indictment unsealed Monday. Gonzalez, a former Secret Service informant, is already awaiting trial over his involvement in the TJX hack.

According to the court document, the hackers allegedly stole more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers (.pdf) from Heartland and Hannaford combined. Prosecutors say they believe these breaches constitute the largest data-breach and identity-theft case ever prosecuted in the United States. They’re investigating other breaches and have not ruled out Gonzalez’s involvement in even more intrusions.

“We’re not seeing a huge array of hackers capable of doing this, but rather a more select group, [and that] demonstrates that there is a level of sophistication involved in these hacks,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Erez Liebermann of the Justice Department’s New Jersey district office.

As with most things, 80% of the damage is done by 20% of the people. I’d say in this case it’s more like 98% of the damage is done by 2% of the hackers only a few of which ever get caught.

I think these guys just got too greedy and went after too many targets, but then their credit card theft ring is called “Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin”. They aren’t likely to die, but they are likely to go down for a long time.

But these are just the latest in a string of high-profile breaches that have been connected to Gonzalez. He and 10 others were charged in May and August 2008 with network intrusions into TJX, OfficeMax, Dave & Busters restaurant chain and other companies. Jury selection is slated to begin Sept. 14 in one of those cases. With regard to the Heartland-Hannaford cases, Gonzalez and the two unnamed Russian hackers have been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

They each face a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a possible maximum fine of $250,000 on the computer-fraud count and an additional 30 years and $1 million fine on the wire-fraud count, or twice the amount they gained from the offense, whichever is greater.

Attorneys for Gonzalez were not available for comment.

According to the New Jersey indictment, Gonzalez, 28, and an uncharged conspirator identified only as “P.T.,” allegedly found their targets on a list of Fortune 500 companies and then did reconnaissance to determine the payment-processing systems they used and uncover vulnerabilities. The hackers used computers they leased or controlled in California, Illinois and New Jersey as well as in Latvia, Ukraine and the Netherlands to store malware, launch their attacks against the networks, and receive the stolen numbers.

If you tally up all the counts that could be one hell of a sentence, especially with the 30 years for the wire-fraud tacked on. I guess if they ever manage to get out of prison, they might get to enjoy the millions they have stolen.

That is assuming they’ve laundered it and stashed it safely somewhere outside the jurisdiction of a US federal investigation.

Either way it’s an interesting case and I’m sure there will be more news about it.

Source: Wired (Thanks Navin)

I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time in Dubai on various projects, and my first surprise was Flickr being blocked. Especially as Dubai is probably the most liberal place in the Middle East. But now this massive invasion of privacy is taking it one BIG step too far, the sneaky way in which it was done is unforgivable too.

I hope Etisalat sees a mass exodus of users leaving their service and joining one that doesn’t try and send a copy of their e-mails and messages to some central location.

An update for Blackberry users in the United Arab Emirates could allow unauthorised access to private information and e-mails. The update was prompted by a text from UAE telecoms firm Etisalat, suggesting it would improve performance. Instead, the update resulted in crashes or drastically reduced battery life.

Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) said in a statement the update was not authorised, developed, or tested by RIM. Etisalat is a major telecommunications firm based in the UAE, with 145,000 Blackberry users on its books.

In the statement, RIM told customers that “Etisalat appears to have distributed a telecommunications surveillance application… independent sources have concluded that it is possible that the installed software could then enable unauthorised access to private or confidential information stored on the user’s smartphone”.

With 145,000 BB users, that’s a fair amount of data they could have been harvesting with their covertly installed monitoring software.

Thankfully the users realised something was wrong with the crashes and terrible battery life not usually seen on Blackberry devices. And RIM have come forward in a responsible manner stating it had nothing to do with them and offering a fix for affected users.

The concern over this unauthorised access only came to light when users started reporting problems with their handsets. After downloading the update, users across the country noticed significantly reduced battery life, poor reception and in some cases, handsets stopped working altogether. Users have complained that the firm’s customer service is unable to provide information on the problem. Initial advice led many users to simply buy new batteries.

The update has now been identified as an application developed by American firm SS8. The California-based company describes itself as a provider of “lawful electronic intercept and surveillance solutions”. It is not clear why Etisalat wanted to include the software in the download.

The firm issued a brief statement last week, calling the problem a “slight technical fault”, saying that the “upgrades were required for service enhancements”.

Yah…sure! A slight technical fault led to installing spyware on your users phones? Ok, I believe you. How does snooping on your users classify as a service enchantment?

Well the competitors certainly don’t offer the same spyware service, so you can claim to be unique at least.

Shame on you Etisalat, really, shame on you.

Source: BBC (Thanks Navin)

Which in all honestly, doesn’t seem to be very smart at all. In basic terms they are trying to turn the power-grid into a two way communication medium so consumers homes can report back to the grid what they are using and they can be disconnected via software rather than requiring physical intervention.

The scary part is there’s no encryption and many things are done without authentication, meaning with a little reverse engineering you can probably shut down the power to anyone on the not-so-smart grid.

New electricity meters being rolled out to millions of homes and businesses are riddled with security bugs that could bring down the power grid, according to a security researcher who plans to demonstrate several attacks at a security conference next month.

The so-called smart meters for the first time provide two-way communications between electricity users and the power plants that serve them. Prodded by billions of dollars from President Obama’s economic stimulus package, utilities in Seattle, Houston, Miami, and elsewhere are racing to install them as part of a plan to make the power grid more efficient. Their counterparts throughout Europe are also spending heavily on the new technology.

There’s just one problem: The newfangled meters needed to make the smart grid work are built on buggy software that’s easily hacked, said Mike Davis, a senior security consultant for IOActive. The vast majority of them use no encryption and ask for no authentication before carrying out sensitive functions such as running software updates and severing customers from the power grid. The vulnerabilities, he said, are ripe for abuse.

An embedded hardware system that will accept new firmware without authentication and nothing is encrypted? That is a hackers playground!

I hope they consider re-architecting the whole system ASAP on a secure platform and rolling that out as a software update. This is no small matter, this is the power grid we are talking about here – lives and business can be seriously effected by someone malicious who wanted to screw up the system.

Imagine if you work out the system and get in there first installing your own firmware which won’t accept any more updates from the main Grid system.

“For an embedded platform, they’re kind of scary,” he said. “It’s really not designed from the ground up for security. Just imagine if somebody is outside your house and has the unique identifier that’s printed on your meter.”

Companies that make gear for smart grids include GE Energy, The ABB Group, Sensus Metering, Itron and Landis+Gyr

One deficiency common among many of the meters is the use of insecure programming functions, such as memcpy() and strcpy(), which are two of the most common sources of exploitable software bugs. In many cases, the devices use general purpose hardware and software that aren’t designed for highly targeted or mission critical systems.

And all paid for by the new president and his generous stimulus packages. It seems like the whole thing has been taped together with band-aids.

There’s no excuse at all for using insecure programming functions in this day and age, I mean it’s 2009 for goodness sake.

How long has C programming been around now? And the concept of security and secure programming, especially for critical infrastructure systems like this.

Source: The Register (Thanks Alan)

But then he exposed his IP address on IRC, posted his face on some freaky vampire site and posted up screenshots of the HVAC system he ‘owned’ on a forum.

He wasn’t exactly making it hard for someone to find him..especially seen as though he actually WORKED IN THE HOSPITAL.

The leader of a malicious hacker collective who used his job as a security guard to breach sensitive Texas hospital computers has been arrested just days before his group planned a “massive DDoS” attack for the July 4 Independence Day holiday.

Jesse William McGraw, 25, of Arlington, Texas, was taken into custody late Friday evening after posting screenshots showing he had complete control of computers that administered air-conditioning systems at The Carrell Clinic in Dallas, federal prosecutors said. McGraw also brazenly posted videos showing him installing malware on hospital computers that made them part of a botnet he operated, said a network security expert, whose sleuthing uncovered the breach.

As a contract security guard at the hospital, McGraw had no authorized access to any of its computers. But that didn’t stop the miscreant, who went by the handle GhostExodus, from taping himself as he walked down the halls of the hospital with a blue security guard uniform poking out through a gray hoody, as he bragged about gaining control over sensitive computers.

If there was ever an original script kiddy, I think this guy fits the bill perfectly.

Seems like his l33t hacking skills extend to walking into rooms he has access too (with a security card), and taking some screenshots!

Or perhaps even sometimes he booted in with BackTrack and reset the passwords.

“It’s a unique mindset among these hackers,” said Wesley McGrew, a 29-year-old network PhD network security researcher at Mississippi State University. “It’s all about respect and fame and the respect of their equally weird peers.”

According to McGrew and federal prosecutors in Dallas, McGraw was the leader of a hacker gang known as the Electronik Tribulation Army. He had recently posted videos admonishing fellow hackers to carry out a “massive DDoS,” or distributed denial of service, attack on July 4, a date he called “Devil’s Day”. While the target and other details of the attack are unknown, the investigators are taking the threat seriously because McGraw, prior to his arrest, had tendered his resignation as a security guard job effective July 3.

According to court documents, hospital officials had experienced problems with their HVAC, or heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, units and were perplexed why none of the system alarms had gone off as programmed. Had they seen screenshots posted here by someone calling themselves GhostExodus, they would have known why. They images showed the HVAC control window for the hospital’s surgery unit. A test alarm setting was turned to “inactive.”

“You almost can’t help it ya know,” GhostExodus writes. “It must be done!”

Yah you just can’t help messing with the critical HVAC system of a hospital YOU TOOL. What is the point of that anyway, other than bragging rights (which will only impress other script kiddies).

Who knows…I guess if he had any real skills he wouldn’t be working as a security guard and he’d actually be using his talent to make some real bank.

Oh well, good luck to you I say GhostExodus.

Source: The Register

It must be pretty serious too if it actually forced them to shut down the Internet facing e-mail network, it seems like it was down for at least a week and possible still unavailable to some users.

This demonstrates the problems self-propagating malware can cause to e-mail systems.

A virus has reportedly disrupted Web-based e-mail services at the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The FBI confirmed Friday that it had been forced to shut down its Internet-facing unclassified network, but disputed a report that the incident had left the agency unable to e-mail counterparts in other intelligence and law enforcement agencies. “The external, unclassified network was shut down by the FBI as a precautionary measure,” the FBI said in a statement. “Within 48 hours of identifying the issue and mitigating risks, e-mail traffic was largely restored to the external, unclassified network.”

FBI agents can send e-mail on the agency’s more secure internal network or via BlackBerry, but many use this unclassified network to send messages via a Web-based e-mail system, said a source familiar with the situation. That webmail service was down throughout the week and continued to be unavailable for some users, the source said.

Where’s the full disclosure! We want details please, was this a normal virus that going around online? Was it something tailored to attack the FBI network? Was it seeded from inside or did it come in externally?

So many interesting questions, but no answers as usual.

It could be related to the recent QuickTime flaw with the DirectX rendering, the timing is about right – I guess we’ll never know though.

The FBI did not provide details on the security incident, but it looks as though hackers may have used maliciously encoded file attachments to hack into the network. In its statement, the FBI said it was now blocking users from sending or receiving attachments on the unclassified network “to give our technicians time to scan all the attachments that came into the e-mail system to make sure we have identified and mitigated all threats to the network.”

Malicious attachments are a constant security threat for computer users.

Microsoft warned Thursday that attackers are sending malicious QuickTime media files to victims, exploiting an unpatched flaw in Apple’s media format, in order to install malicious software on Windows systems.

It was first reported by NYPost and then later by CBS News.

I’ll be keeping an eye out to see if there are any further developments or news disclosure, if you’ve read anything relevant drop a link the comments.

Source: Network World

He seems to have been quite sloppy about covering his tracks and remaining under the radar, he acts as if no-one can get him. Perhaps he knows something we don’t?

Anyway he’s firmly under investigation now having first popped onto the radar 10 years at the age of 19 for hacking into Pentagon computers.

Ehud Tenenbaum, an Israeli hacker arrested in Canada last year for allegedly stealing about $1.5 million from Canadian banks, also allegedly hacked two U.S. banks, a credit and debit card distribution company and a payment processor in what U.S. authorities are calling a global “cashout” conspiracy.

The U.S. hacks have resulted in at least $10 million in losses, according to court records obtained by Threat Level, and are just part of a larger international conspiracy to hack financial institutions in the United States and abroad.

The broadened case highlights the continued vulnerability of U.S. financial networks to cybercrime, despite supposedly tight industry security standards. It comes on the heels of other multimillion-dollar heists that also breached the security protecting ATM codes and account information. In late 2007, criminals used four hacked iWire payroll cards to steal $5 million from ATMs around the world in just two days. Shortly thereafter, a processing server that handles withdrawals from Citibank-branded ATMs at 7-Eleven convenience stores was cracked, leading crooks to converge on New York to withdraw at least $2 million from Citibank accounts using the stolen ATM data. And a carefully coordinated global heist last November resulted in a one-day haul of $9 million in cash, following a breach at payment processor RBS WorldPay.

It seems like the US banking system has some major problems, with all their self-invented, self-imposed regulations (SOX, PCI, ISO27001 etc.) you’d think they would be more secure.

Obviously all these regulations and reams of paperwork are just making things worse, burying problems under tonnes of dead trees really doesn’t help.

It’s a very International crime network with participants all over the World including Dutch servers and hackers in Russia and Turkey.

According to the affidavit, in October 2007, the United States Secret Service began investigating “an international conspiracy” to hack into computer networks of U.S. financial institutions and other businesses. As part of that investigation, agents examined network intrusions that occurred in January and February 2008 at OmniAmerican Credit Union, based in Fort Worth, Texas, and Global Cash Card of Irvine, California, a distributor of prepaid debit cards used primarily for payroll payments.

In both cases, the attacker gained access using a SQL injection attack that exploited a vulnerability in the company’s database software. The attacker grabbed credit and debit card numbers that were then used by thieves in several countries to withdraw more than $1 million from ATMs.

In April and May 2008, agents investigated two additional hacks at 1st Source Bank in Indiana, and at Symmetrex, a prepaid debit card processor based in Florida. The intruder again used a SQL injection attack, and losses added up to more than $3 million.

It seems like this might have been going on for some time, he managed to pull similar stunts in both Canada and the US and perhaps even Greece too.

I wonder where he is now, and where he’s going to hit next. Or perhaps he won’t, he must have plenty of cash to lay low in some country with no extradition treaty with the US.

Do read the whole article as it’s very interesting.

Source: Wired Blog

I guess it’s hard to control a 3rd party call center though and who works there of course. I guess from now on they will be running their ship a little bit tighter, I’ve conducted audits on centers which deal with financial information before and the security was insane. Unless you etched the info into your body with a paperclip there’s no way you were getting it out of there.

A criminal gang selling UK credit card details stolen from Indian call centres has been exposed by an undercover BBC News investigation.

Reporters posing as fraudsters bought UK names, addresses and valid credit card details from a Delhi-based man. The seller denied any wrongdoing and Symantec corporation, from whom three victims bought a product via a call centre, called the incident “isolated”. Card fraud totalled £609m during 2008, according to payments group Apacs.

Symantec said it requires rigorous security measures of any third-party call centre agents and it believed the breach had been limited to a single agent. The BBC team went to India on a tip off after being put in touch with a man offering to sell stolen credit and debit card details.

The price they charged is quite high too, more than double the normal online rate for purchasing dodgy credit card details. I guess they could fetch a premium though being UK cards and having a high chance of being active, valid cards.

It turns out the info wasn’t that accurate, but it was good enough to commit some online fraud.

He told the pair he could supply them with hundreds of credit and debit card details each week at a cost of $10 dollars a card. After the reporters agreed to initially buy the details of 50 cards, the man handed over a list of 14. He said the remainder would be sent later by e-mail.

The man claimed some of the numbers had been obtained from call centres handling mobile phone sales, or payments for phone bills. Back in the UK, the broker continued to supply card details to one of the undercover reporters by email.

Nearly all of the names, addresses and post codes sold to the BBC team were valid. But most of the numbers attached to them were invalid – often out by a single digit. However, about one in seven of the numbers purchased were valid – active cards still in use by UK customers. Their owners could have been subjected to fraud if these cards had fallen into the hands of criminals.

It just goes to show, even when you’re not being phished you’re still in danger of being conned and defrauded.

Just be careful what you buy and how you buy it, I’d say buying online from a HTTPS site with a valid certificate from a real CA is much safer than doing it over the phone.

But then that’s just me.

Source: BBC News

They claim it’s not illegal as they caused no harm and only sent spam to e-mail accounts used by themselves. Technically I think it’s still breaking the law under the Computer Misuse Act but most likely nothing would happen as they caused no damage or losses (According to lawyer Struan Robertson BBC did violate the act).

Software used to control thousands of home computers has been acquired online by the BBC as part of an investigation into global cyber crime.

The technology programme Click has demonstrated just how at risk PCs are of being taken over by hackers. Almost 22,000 computers made up Click’s network of hijacked machines, which has now been disabled.

The BBC has now warned users that their PCs are infected, and advised them on how to make their systems more secure. Click managed to acquire its own low-value botnet – the name given to a network of hijacked computers – after visiting chatrooms on the internet.

The programme did not access any personal information on the infected PCs. If this exercise had been done with criminal intent it would be breaking the law.

The whole thing has created quite a furor in the computer security scene, with people debating the legality and ethics involved.

Which was probably what the BBC wanted in the first place, the more people talk about it the better right?

SMH even claim the whole thing back-fired.

By prior agreement, Click launched a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on a backup site owned by security company Prevx. Click then ordered its slave PCs to bombard its target site with requests for access to make it inaccessible.

Amazingly, it took only 60 machines to overload the site’s bandwidth. DDoS attacks are used by extortionists who threaten to knock a site offline unless a hefty ransom is paid. Jacques Erasmus from Prevx said that high-traffic websites with big revenues are a “massive target” for this kind of attack.

“Cyber criminals are getting into contact with websites and threatening them with DDoS attacks. “The loss of trade is very substantial so a lot of these websites just pay-up to avoid it,” he explained.

But well pushing the boundaries, that’s what investigative journalism is about right? We’ve had enough programs about pimps, triads and drugs – why not some about cybercrime and the underbelly on the Internet.

I hope I manage to view the show, it sounds like it’ll be interesting (even if ethically questionable).

But well aren’t all the best things on that thin grey line?

Source: BBC

I hope they keep it up, botnets are the scourge of the Internet and people should feel safe about their bank accounts and Paypal money. The Internet is becoming a bad neighborhood with people looking over their shoulders all the time.

A Los Angeles man was sentenced late Wednesday in federal court to four years in prison after pleading guilty last year to infecting as many as 250,000 computers and stealing thousands of peoples’ identities and hijacking their bank accounts.

The Los Angeles authorities said John Schiefer, 27, was the nation’s first defendant to plead guilty to wiretapping charges (.pdf) in connection to using botnets.

Schiefer, who went by the online handle “acidstorm,” faced as many as 60 years in prison and acknowledged using a botnet to remotely control computers across the United States. Once in control of the computers, the authorities said, (.pdf) his spybot malware allowed him to intercept computer communications. He mined usernames and passwords on accounts such as PayPal and made purchases totaling thousands of dollars without consent.

The first one to plead guilty eh? I guess the others will fall later with charges that can rack up some serious prison time with back to back sentences. I guess pleading guilty saved him from the possible 60 year sentence.

It must be hard to track the exact amount he conned from people and stole from Paypal accounts as there’s no real way to audit it. But as the law goes estimates are made by extrapolating whatever hard data they do have.

The authorities said he worked by day as an information security consultant with 3G Communications. After his guilty plea, Schiefer was hired at Mahalo, the so-called “human powered search engine.” Its founder, Jason Calacanis wrote that the company failed to realize that the Los Angeles company had hired a man who had pleaded guilty to being a hacker.

The defendant was among eight individuals indicted or successfully prosecuted in a crack down on black hat hackers who use armies of zombie computers to commit financial fraud, attack web sites with floods of traffic and send spam. The crimes at issue involved more than $20 million in losses, according to the FBI.

The FBI dubbed the eight cases “Operation Bot Roast II” — the second round of its investigations against botnets, one of the most dangerous threats online today. The first FBI crackdown on botnets was announced in June, 2007.

$20 million in losses seems a fairly generous estimate, but then I guess it makes for better headlines right? I wonder when “Operating Bot Roast III” will begin?

It won’t be too long I imagine, I hope they crack down on the botnets sending out spam – those are the ones that REALLY irk me.

Source: Wired (Thanks Navin)