Cybercrime

NASA hacker Gary McKinnon will face no legal action in the U.K.

The Crown Prosecution Service has decided the appropriate jurisdiction for the McKinnon case is the U.S., after discussing the case with the U.S. Department of Justice and the police.

U.S. authorities started their bid to extradite McKinnon in 2005, accusing him of causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage by hacking into NASA and military systems. McKinnon admitted to the intrusion in 2002 but claimed he was looking for evidence of UFO activity.

But U.S. requests for his extradition were formally turned down … Read more

Retailer point-of-sale systems may be at risk of malware that steals credit card data.

Israel-based security firm Seculert has identified a strain of malware, dubbed Dexter, which it asserts has infected hundreds of point-of-sale (POS) systems across 40 countries in the past two to three months. English-speaking countries appear to be a prime target, with 30 percent of infections in the U.S., 19 percent in the U.K., and 9 percent in Canada.

Rather than targeting thousands of individual machines through traditional Trojans or phishing emails, the custom-made malware targets specific POS systems. The malware injects itself into the … Read more

The wave of distributed denial of service attacks that hit U.S. banks in October was next-to-nothing compared to what could happen if cybercriminals actually carry through with their plans for next year.

According to a report (PDF) released today by McAfee Labs, an impending attack on U.S. financial institutions -- dubbed Project Blitzkrieg -- isn't only a possibility, it's a "credible threat."

"McAfee Labs believes that Project Blitzkrieg is a credible threat to the financial industry and appears to be moving forward as planned," the report reads. "Although Project Blitzkrieg hasn'… Read more

Facebook helped the FBI take down an international crime ring that used a botnet to infect 11 million computers and steal more than $850 million, one of the largest cybercrime hauls in history.

The FBI announced today that with the social-networking giant's assistance, it had arrested 10 people from countries around the world who it said used the Yahos malware and Butterfly botnet to steal victims' credit card, bank account, and personal information.

"Facebook's security team provided assistance to law enforcement throughout the investigation by helping to identify the root cause, the perpetrators, and those affected by … Read more

Team GhostShell, the hacktivist collective, said today that it has stolen accounts from a large number of government agencies, contractors, and security firms, posting information from 1.6 million accounts online.

Dubbed Project White Fox, the hacking project appears to have affected NASA, the FBI, the Pentagon, and Interpol, among many others. The hackers announced their work in a file posted on Pastebin.

Our colleagues at ZDNet report:

A new version of the Zeus botnet was used to steal about $47 million from European banking customers in the past year, security researchers report.

Dubbed "Eurograbber" by security vendors Versafe and Check Point Software Technologies in a report (PDF) released today, the malware is designed to defeat the two-factor authentication process banks use for transactions by intercepting bank messages sent to victims' phones.

A variant of the Zeus malware used to steal more than $100 million, Eurograbber typically launched its attack when a victim clicked on a malicious link most likely included in a phishing attempt. After … Read more

GNAA, a hacker group, claimed responsibility for the attack. The group's Twitter profile earlier today said 8,600 unique Tumblr users were affected.

Tumblr didn't explain what happened but said in a blog post that no accounts were compromised, and users didn't need to take any further action.

"Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience," the company said. "As always, … Read more

Anonymous' hacking campaign against Israel to protest its attacks on Gaza escalated today with the release of a list of thousands of individuals who supposedly donated to a pro-Israel organization.

The collective posted a Pastebin document that it said featured names -- and in some cases home addresses and e-mail addresses -- of donors for the Unity Coalition for Israel, which claims to represent "the largest network of pro-Israel groups in the world." The document appears to be quite old: one of the military e-mail addresses belonged to Douglas Feith, the U.S. undersecretary for defense under Bush, … Read more

Congress needs to take action to deflect the growing threat of Chinese cyber-espionage against the U.S., a U.S. commission recommends in a new report.

Released today, the 500-page annual report to Congress by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission details various security issues concerning China. But the commission expressed particular fear over the country's ongoing cyberwarfare efforts.

Calling China the "most threatening actor in cyberspace," the report found that in 2012, Chinese state-sponsored hackers continued to target computers systems run by the U.S. government and military as well those maintained in … Read more