Hackers charged in largest identity theft case

A Miami man and two unidentified computer hackers were charged with stealing 130 million credit and debit card numbers in what the Justice Department said was the largest such prosecution in US history.

Albert Gonzalez, a 28-year-old Miami resident, and two hackers living "in or near Russia" were indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury in Newark, New Jersey, for stealing data from Heartland Payment Systems, 7-Eleven Corp, Delhaize Group's Hannaford Brothers and two unidentified national retailers.

The hackers stole 130 million card numbers from Heartland, a bank-card payment processor, starting in December 2007, by using malicious computer software, according to the 14-page indictment. An undetermined number of card numbers were stolen from 7-Eleven and 4.2 million from Hannaford, a regional supermarket chain, according to the indictment.

"This investigation marks the continued success of law enforcement in tracking down cutting edge hacking schemes committed by hackers working together across the globe," acting US Attorney Ralph Marra said in a statement.

Gonzalez, who is in federal custody in Brooklyn, New York, was indicted last year by federal grand juries in Massachusetts and New York for data breaches at companies. He was a federal informant after his arrest in New Jersey by the US Secret Service in 2003 in a case involving hackers known as the Shadowcrew, the US Attorney's Office in Boston said in a statement after indicting him on August 5, 2008.

"During the course of this investigation, the Secret Service discovered that Gonzalez, who was working as a confidential informant for the agency, was criminally involved in the case," the statement said. It said he faces life in prison because of the "size and scope of his criminal activity".

Gonzalez and the two hackers were charged in Newark yesterday with two counts of conspiracy in a scheme to sell data they stole using computers in New Jersey, California, Illinois, Latvia, Ukraine and the Netherlands, according to the indictment.

He faces up to 35 years in prison in the new case.

"The scope is massive," Assistant US Attorney Erez Liebermann said.

Gonzalez's involvement shows "he had the ability to put together teams of hackers who were able to carry out these data breaches and steal massive amounts of data in the forms or credit and debit card numbers", said Liebermann.

"This guy worked very, very hard at something he was very good at," the prosecutor said. "He found the right people to successfully accomplish his objective, which was to identify victim corporations and steal credit and debit card numbers."

An attorney for Gonzalez, Rene Palomino Jr in Miami, did not immediately return calls seeking comment.


Cyber crooks riding social-networking wave

A hacking incident report released on Monday warns there has been a steep rise in attacks at social-networking hotspots including wildly popular microblogging service Twitter.

Hackers are not just hunting for victims in the flocks of people at social networks, they are also using Twitter to command "botnet" armies of infected computers, according to internet security specialists.

"Any website with a huge user following is now attracting the bad guys," said Ryan Barnett, Director of Application Security Research for Breach Security.

"A lot of Web 2.0 widgets, mashups and the like that users go for make it easy for all these guys to launch attacks," he said.

Facebook became an internet star after opening its platform to widgets, mini-applications made by outside developers, and now boasts more than 250 million members. Barnett was among the authors of a Web Hacking Incidents Database Bi-Annual Report that concluded social-networking was the most popular "vertical market" for hackers in the first six months of this year. The prime targets for attacks in 2008 were government and law enforcement websites, according to the Web Hacking Incidents Database.

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