Confessed TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for orchestrating one of the largest thefts of payment card numbers in history.
The sentence, by US District Court Judge Patti Saris, is the lengthiest to be imposed in a US hacking or identity prosecution. Miami-based Gonzalez was also fined $25,000 and still faces restitution charges that could be in the tens of millions of dollars.
Prosecutors told the judge Gonzalez should receive 25 years because he victimized millions of people and cost banks and their insurers as much as $200m. His attorney, Martin Weinberg, challenged that estimate and presented evidence his client suffered from Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism.
Last year, Gonzalez pleaded guilty in three separate cases brought in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. Thursday's sentence in Boston dealt only with the Massachusetts case. A hearing scheduled for Friday will deal with the other two prosecutions.
Prosecutors said Gonzalez led a gang of hackers who conducted war-driving campaigns that identified retailers with weak wireless networks. They then penetrated those networks and installed sniffer programs that siphoned millions of credit and debit card numbers as they were being zapped to payment processors.
The operation targeted a variety of retailers and restaurants including TJX Cos. and BJ's Wholesale Club, Office Max, Barnes & Noble and Dave & Busters restaurant chain. Thursday's sentence came the same day Dave & Busters agreed to implement a comprehensive security program to settle US Federal Trade Commission charges the restaurant left consumers vulnerable to credit card thieves.
source : theregister.co.uk
Showing posts with label CC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CC. Show all posts
Friday, April 2, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
CIA, PayPal under bizarre SSL assault
The Central Intelligence Agency, PayPal, and hundreds of other organizations are under an unexplained assault that's bombarding their websites with millions of compute-intensive requests.
The "massive" flood of requests is made over the websites' SSL, or secure-sockets layer, port, causing them to consume more resources than normal connections, according to researchers at Shadowserver Foundation, a volunteer security collective. The torrent started about a week ago and appears to be caused by recent changes made to a botnet known as Pushdo.
"What do I mean by massive? I mean you are likely seeing an unexpected increase in traffic by several million hits spread out across several hundred thousand IP addresses," Shadowserver' Steven Adair wrote. "This might be a big deal if you're used to only getting a few hundred or thousands of hits a day or you don't have unlimited bandwidth."
Shadowserver has identified 315 websites that are the recipients of the SSL assault. In addition to cia.gov and paypal.com, other sites include yahoo.com, americanexpress.com, and sans.org.
It's not clear why Pushdo has unleashed the torrent. Infected PCs appear to initiate the SSL connections, along with a bit of junk, disconnect and then repeat the cycle. They don't request any resources from the website or do anything else.
"We find it hard to believe this much activity would be used to make the bots blend in with normal traffic, but at the same time it doesn't quite look like a DDoS either," Adair wrote.
Security mavens aren't sure what targeted sites can do to thwart the attacks. Changing IP addresses may provide a temporary reprieve. Adair asks those with better mitigation techniques to contact him. The Shadowserver advisory is here.
The "massive" flood of requests is made over the websites' SSL, or secure-sockets layer, port, causing them to consume more resources than normal connections, according to researchers at Shadowserver Foundation, a volunteer security collective. The torrent started about a week ago and appears to be caused by recent changes made to a botnet known as Pushdo.
"What do I mean by massive? I mean you are likely seeing an unexpected increase in traffic by several million hits spread out across several hundred thousand IP addresses," Shadowserver' Steven Adair wrote. "This might be a big deal if you're used to only getting a few hundred or thousands of hits a day or you don't have unlimited bandwidth."
Shadowserver has identified 315 websites that are the recipients of the SSL assault. In addition to cia.gov and paypal.com, other sites include yahoo.com, americanexpress.com, and sans.org.
It's not clear why Pushdo has unleashed the torrent. Infected PCs appear to initiate the SSL connections, along with a bit of junk, disconnect and then repeat the cycle. They don't request any resources from the website or do anything else.
"We find it hard to believe this much activity would be used to make the bots blend in with normal traffic, but at the same time it doesn't quite look like a DDoS either," Adair wrote.
Security mavens aren't sure what targeted sites can do to thwart the attacks. Changing IP addresses may provide a temporary reprieve. Adair asks those with better mitigation techniques to contact him. The Shadowserver advisory is here.
Most consumers reuse banking passwords
The majority of online banking customers reuse their online-banking login credentials on other websites, according to a new survey on password insecurity.
Online security firm Trusteer reports that 73 per cent of bank customers use their online account password to access at least one other, less sensitive website. Even worse, around half (47 per cent) use the same online banking username and password for other website logins.
This dismal password security practice means that if cybercrooks trick a user into giving away his login credentials for a social networking site, for example, they stand a very good chance of getting into webmail and online banking accounts for the same person, potentially bringing about crippling financial losses as a result.
Trusteer's findings are pulled from a sample of users of its Rapport browser security service. This is offered through online banks in Europe and North America to their customers as a defence against phishing attacks. Web users outfitted with Trusteer's Rapport browser security plug-in are prevented from sending login details to fraudsters, even if they visit and attempt to enter data into a known phishing site.
The survey (PDF) also found that when a bank permits users to pick their own user ID, 65 per cent will re-use this username with a non-financial website, a figure that drops to 45 per cent even if a bank chooses the user ID for its customers.
Trusteer expressed surprise that consumers were so lax on password security, even when it comes to online banking websites. Here at El Reg, we'd be surprised if anyone produced a survey or research indicating that password security among consumers and enterprise users was anything better than dreadful.
"Using stolen credentials remains the easiest way for criminals to bypass the security measures implemented by banks to protect their online applications, so we wanted to see how often users re-purpose their financial service usernames and passwords," explained Amit Klein, CTO of Trusteer. "Our findings were very surprising, and reveal that consumers are not aware, or are choosing to ignore, the security implications of reusing their banking credentials on multiple websites."
Trusteer advised consumers to keep at least three sets of credentials: one that's only used with financial websites, the second for websites that hold information about a user's identity, and the third set for other less sensitive websites. That's certainly a start, but web users also need to think about using hard-to-guess passwords able to withstand brute force dictionary password cracking attacks commonly used by even minimally-skilled cybercroooks.
Top tips from Microsoft and Sophos outline tactics for coming up with hard-to-break but straightforward enough to remember website login credentials.
from : security Focus
Online security firm Trusteer reports that 73 per cent of bank customers use their online account password to access at least one other, less sensitive website. Even worse, around half (47 per cent) use the same online banking username and password for other website logins.
This dismal password security practice means that if cybercrooks trick a user into giving away his login credentials for a social networking site, for example, they stand a very good chance of getting into webmail and online banking accounts for the same person, potentially bringing about crippling financial losses as a result.
Trusteer's findings are pulled from a sample of users of its Rapport browser security service. This is offered through online banks in Europe and North America to their customers as a defence against phishing attacks. Web users outfitted with Trusteer's Rapport browser security plug-in are prevented from sending login details to fraudsters, even if they visit and attempt to enter data into a known phishing site.
The survey (PDF) also found that when a bank permits users to pick their own user ID, 65 per cent will re-use this username with a non-financial website, a figure that drops to 45 per cent even if a bank chooses the user ID for its customers.
Trusteer expressed surprise that consumers were so lax on password security, even when it comes to online banking websites. Here at El Reg, we'd be surprised if anyone produced a survey or research indicating that password security among consumers and enterprise users was anything better than dreadful.
"Using stolen credentials remains the easiest way for criminals to bypass the security measures implemented by banks to protect their online applications, so we wanted to see how often users re-purpose their financial service usernames and passwords," explained Amit Klein, CTO of Trusteer. "Our findings were very surprising, and reveal that consumers are not aware, or are choosing to ignore, the security implications of reusing their banking credentials on multiple websites."
Trusteer advised consumers to keep at least three sets of credentials: one that's only used with financial websites, the second for websites that hold information about a user's identity, and the third set for other less sensitive websites. That's certainly a start, but web users also need to think about using hard-to-guess passwords able to withstand brute force dictionary password cracking attacks commonly used by even minimally-skilled cybercroooks.
Top tips from Microsoft and Sophos outline tactics for coming up with hard-to-break but straightforward enough to remember website login credentials.
from : security Focus
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