250 Webstresser Users to Face Legal Action

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2019 13:43:59 +0000

More than 250 customers of a popular and powerful online attack-for-hire service that was dismantled by authorities in 2018 are expected to face legal action for the damage they caused, according to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency. In April 2018, investigators in the U.S., U.K. and the Netherlands took down attack-for-hire service WebStresser[.]org and arrested its alleged administrators. Prior to the takedown, the service had more than 151,000 registered users and was responsible for launching some four million attacks over three years. Now, those same authorities are targeting people who paid the service to conduct attacks.

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Three Charged for Working With Serial Swatter

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2019 18:24:00 +0000

The Justice Department has filed criminal charges against three U.S. men accused of swatting, or making hoax reports of bomb threats or murders in a bid to trigger a heavily armed police response to a target’s address. Investigators say the men, aged 19 to 23, all carried out the attacks with the help of Tyler Barriss, a convicted serial swatter whose last stunt in late 2018 cost an Oklahoma man his life. FBI agents on Wednesday arrested Neal Patel, 23, of Des Plaines, Ill. and Tyler Stewart, 19 of Gulf Breeze, Fla. The third defendant, Logan Patten, 19, of Greenwood, Mo., agreed to turn himself in. The men are charged in three separate indictments with conspiracy and conveying false information about the use of explosive devices.

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773M Password ‘Megabreach’ is Years Old

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2019 20:11:08 +0000

My inbox and Twitter messages positively lit up today with people forwarding stories from Wired and other publications about a supposedly new trove of nearly 773 million unique email addresses and 21 million unique passwords that were posted to a hacking forum. A story in The Guardian breathlessly dubbed it “the largest collection ever of breached data found.” But in an interview with the apparent seller, KrebsOnSecurity learned that it is not even close to the largest gathering of stolen data, and that it is at least two to three years old.

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“Stole $24 Million But Still Can’t Keep a Friend”

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2019 00:52:34 +0000

Unsettling new claims have emerged about Nicholas Truglia, a 21-year-old Manhattan resident accused of hijacking cell phone accounts to steal tens of millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies from victims. The lurid details, made public in a civil lawsuit filed this week by one of his alleged victims, paints a chilling picture of a man addicted to thievery and all its trappings. The documents suggest that Truglia stole from his father and even a dead man — all the while lamenting that his fabulous new wealth brought him nothing but misery.

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Courts Hand Down Hard Jail Time for DDoS

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2019 19:37:32 +0000

Seldom do people responsible for launching crippling cyberattacks face justice, but increasingly courts around the world are making examples of the few who do get busted for such crimes. On Friday, a 34-year-old Connecticut man received a whopping 10-year prison sentence for carrying out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against a number of hospitals in 2014. Also last week, a 30-year-old in the United Kingdom was sentenced to 32 months in jail for using an army of hacked devices to crash large portions of Liberia’s Internet access in 2016.

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Serial Swatter and Stalker Mir Islam Arrested for Allegedly Dumping Body in River

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2018 20:24:29 +0000

A 22-year-old man convicted of cyberstalking and carrying out numerous bomb threats and swatting attacks — including a 2013 swatting incident at my home — was arrested Sunday morning in the Philippines after allegedly helping a friend dump the body of a housemate into a local river.

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Bomb Threat Hoaxer, DDos Boss Gets 3 Years

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2018 01:38:49 +0000

The alleged ringleader of a gang of cyber hooligans that made bomb threats against hundreds of schools and launched debilitating denial-of-service attacks against Web sites (including KrebsOnSecurity on multiple occasions) has been sentenced to three years in a U.K. prison, and faces the possibility of additional charges from U.S.-based law enforcement officials. 

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Calif. Man Pleads Guilty in Fatal Swatting Case, Faces 20+ Years in Prison

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2018 20:27:01 +0000

A California man who pleaded guilty Tuesday to causing dozens of swatting attacks — including a deadly incident in Kansas last year — now faces 20 or more years in prison.

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