Security News
The Russian hacker accused of raiding LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring, and obtaining data on 213 million user accounts, has been found guilty. The jury reckoned Nikulin probably swiped the LinkedIn account details, all 117 million of them, for commercial gain, though they didn't think greed played a role in his theft of 28 million account records from Formspring and 68 million from Dropbox.
A Russian national accused of hacking into online platforms LinkedIn, Formspring, and Dropbox was found guilty by a United States jury last week. The man, Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin, 32, was arrested in 2016 in the Czech Republic, and remained incarcerated there for two years, before being extradited to the U.S. In 2016, U.S. authorities charged Nikulin with accessing without authorization the systems of LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring in 2012, using stolen employee credentials.
U.S. President Donald Trump has confirmed that a cyberattack was launched in 2018 against a Russian company believed to be behind some major disinformation campaigns, including ones targeting elections. The Washington Post reported in February 2019 that the U.S. Cyber Command, supported by the NSA, had launched an attack on the Internet Research Agency, a Saint Petersburg-based firm that is said to conduct online influence operations for the Russian government.
In 1965, Gordon Moore published a short informal paper, Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. Based on not much more but these few data points and his knowledge of silicon chip development - he was head of R&D at Fairchild Semiconductors, the company that was to seed Silicon Valley - he said that for the next decade, component counts by area could double every year.
Former UK prime minister Tony Blair has declared that governments can't "Take 10 years to catch up" with cyber crims - while speaking at an infosec conference organised by Vladimir Putin's favourite Russian bank. Blair scoffed at people with concerns about the role of the state in everyday online life, saying: "When people worry about the data they shared with governments - most people share enormous amounts of data with technology companies!".
Over the past year, a Russian cybercrime group has launched over 200 business email compromise campaigns targeting multinational organizations. The group mainly focused on senior-level executives, with three quarters of the targets holding titles such as managing director, vice president, or general manager.
The BEC gang is called Cosmic Lynx, and has been associated with more than 200 BEC campaigns targeting senior-level executives in 46 countries since last July. "Unlike most BEC emails that are riddled with misspelled words and grammatical errors, Cosmic Lynx emails are usually very detailed and written in nearly perfect English," researchers said.
A Russian national pleaded guilty last week for his role in an international cyber theft ring that caused losses of more than $568 million. The man, Sergey Medvedev, also known as "Stells," "Segmed" and "Serjbear," 33, admitted to engaging in criminal activities as part of the Infraud Organization, an international cybercrime gang that operated between October 2010 and February 2018.
A Russian computer hacker who facilitated $20 million in credit card fraud and ran a sophisticated clearinghouse for international cybercriminals was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison. Prosecutors say Aleksei Burkov of St. Petersburg, Russia, filled a unique niche in the world of cybercrime, describing his Direct Connection website as "The most exclusive criminal forum on the web." Would-be participants had to put up a $5,000 bond and have three existing members vouch for them.
A United States federal district court has finally sentenced a Russian hacker to nine years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty of running two illegal websites devoted to facilitating payment card fraud, computer hacking, and other crimes. Aleksei Yurievich Burkov, 30, pleaded guilty in January this year to two of the five charges against him for credit card fraud-one count of access device fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud, identity theft, computer intrusions, wire fraud, and money laundering.