Security News
Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins, a Canadian man charged by the US for his involvement in NetWalker ransomware attacks, was sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in prison after pleading guilty before an Ontario judge to multiple offenses linked to attacks on 17 Canadian victims. The US Department of Justice said in January 2021 that Desjardins allegedly obtained more than $27.6 million after multiple successful attacks and extortion attempts since April 2020, when he first took up his new ransomware affiliate role.
Bernalillo County, New Mexico, has been unable to comply with the settlement terms of a 27-year-old lawsuit over prison conditions because of a ransomware attack last week that saw prisoners back under manual control. Commissioners told the court that all of Bernalillo County, which covers the US state of New Mexico's largest city Albuquerque, had been affected by a January 5, 2022, ransomware attack, including the Metropolitan Detention Center that houses some of the state's incarcerated.
A man pleaded guilty to fraudulently opening rideshare and delivery service accounts using stolen identity information sold on dark web marketplaces. The man is believed to be a leading actor of an 18-member team who stole identities and falsified documents to create false rideshare and delivery service accounts and then sold or rented them to other individuals.
A Russian national believed to be a member of the TrickBot malware development team has been extradited to the U.S. and is currently facing charges that could get him 60 years in prison. He is the second malware developer associated with the TrickBot gang that the Department of Justice arrested this year.
Justin Sean Johnson, also known as TheDearthStar and Dearthy Star, was sentenced this week to seen years in prison for the 2014 hack of the health care provider and insurer University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. After breaching UPMC's human resources databases, Johnson stole the Personally Identifiable Information and W-2 info of more than 65,000 employees and sold it on the dark web.
Belarusian law enforcement has published a list of Telegram channels that are now considered extremist and warned people that merely joining them would be punishable by up to seven years of imprisonment. The agency published a list of over 100 banned channels on a Telegram channel operated by the law enforcement agency.
32-year old Matthew Gatrel of St. Charles, Illinois, ran two websites that allowed paying users to launch more than 200,000 DDoS attacks on targets in both the private and public sector. He ran two sites, DownThem and Ampnode, both enabling DDoS attacks.
A New York man received a three-year sentence in federal prison for hacking social media accounts of dozens of female college students and stealing nude photos and videos of them. Nicholas Faber, 25, of Rochester, along with co-conspirator Michael Fish, accessed the school email accounts of female students at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh to get the information that allowed them to hack into their social media and cloud storage accounts.
n Illionois pharmacist arrested today faces 120 years in prison for allegedly selling dozens of authentic COVID-19 vaccination record cards issued by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention."Knowingly selling COVID vaccination cards to unvaccinated individuals puts millions of Americans at risk of serious injury or death," said FBI Special Agent in Charge Emmerson Buie Jr. "To put such a small price on the safety of our nation is not only an insult to those who are doing their part in the fight to stop COVID-19, but a federal crime with serious consequences."
At one point, Sonderman posted Herring's home address in a Discord chat room used by the group, and a minor in the United Kingdom quickly followed up by directing a swatting attack on Herring's home. From there, the attackers can reset the password for any online account that allows password resets via SMS. But it wasn't the subsequent bomb threat that Sonderman and friends called in to her home that bothered Dozono most.