Security News
A U.K. national has pleaded guilty in connection with the July 2020 Twitter attack affecting numerous high-profile accounts and defrauding other users of the platform. Joseph James O'Connor, who also went by the online alias PlugwalkJoe, admitted to "His role in cyberstalking and multiple schemes that involve computer hacking, including the July 2020 hack of Twitter," the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Joe Sullivan, the former Uber CSO who has been convicted last year for attempting to cover up a data breach Uber suffered in 2016 and kept it hidden from the Federal Trade Commission, has been sentenced to three years of probation plus 200 hours of community service. Sullivan became Chief Security Officer at Uber in April 2015, and in November 2016 testified before the FTC under oath that the company had taken to keep customer data secure following a 2014 data breach.
After stealing the data, he decided to blackmail the clinic for €450,000; when that didn't work he stooped yet lower and tried blackmailing the patients for €200 each, with a warning that the "Fee" would increase to €500 after 24 hours. Patients who didn't pay up after a further 48 hours, the blackmailer said, would be doxxed, a jargon term meaning to have your personal data exposed publicly on purpose.
Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, the 20-year-old founder and the administrator of the now-defunct BreachForums has been formally charged in the U.S. with conspiracy to commit access device fraud. If proven guilty, Fitzpatrick, who went by the online moniker "Pompompurin," faces a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison.
An ex-General Electric engineer has been sentenced to two years in prison after being convicted of stealing the US giant's turbine technology for China. New York resident Xiaoqing Zheng, 59, who used to be employed at GE Power and specialized in turbine sealing technology, was convicted of conspiracy to commit economic espionage at the end of March after a jury trial in the Northern District of New York courthouse.
The Australian Federal Police have announced today that a 24-year-old woman from Melbourne, arrested in 2019 for her role in large-scale, cyber-enabled identity theft crimes, was sentenced to five years and six months in prison. According to the AFT, she was part of an international crime syndicate engaged in "Large-scale and sophisticated cybercrimes," stealing at least $3.3 million and laundering another $2.5 million.
As you'll know if ever you've lost a phone, or damaged a SIM card, mobile phone numbers aren't burned into the phone itself, but are programmed into the subscriber identity module chip that you insert into your phone. A crook who can sweet-talk, or bribe, or convince using fake ID, or otherwise browbeat your mobile phone provider into issuing "You" a new SIM card.
A Navy nuclear engineer and his wife were sentenced to over 19 years and more than 21 years in prison for attempting to sell nuclear warship design secrets to what they believed was a foreign power agent. While working as a Navy nuclear engineer, Jonathan Toebbe had access to naval nuclear propulsion information, including military-sensitive design elements, performance characteristics, and other restricted data for nuclear-powered warship reactors.
An Instagram influencer known as 'Hushpuppi' has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for conspiring to launder tens of millions of USD from business email compromise scams and various cyber schemes. The 40-year-old Nigerian's real name is Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, and was ordered to pay restitution of $1,732,841 to two confirmed victims, a law firm in the U.S. and a businessperson in Qatar.
On June 8, 2020, an individual claiming to be billionaire film producer and philanthropist Sidney Kimmel contacted brokerage Charles Schwab by phone and stated that he had uploaded a wire disbursement form using the service's secure email service. All the while the alleged mastermind, Arthur Lee Cofield Jr, was incarcerated in a maximum security prison in Butts County, Georgia, according to the government.