fraud
Alleged Ponzi Mastermind Stanford Pwned in Antigua
In early 2008, while federal investigators were busy looking into disgraced financier Robert Allen Stanford for his part in an alleged $8 billion fraudulent investment scheme , Eastern European hackers were quietly hoovering up tens of thousands of customer financial records from the Bank of Antigua, an institution formerly owned by the Stanford Group. According to a fraud investigator with firsthand knowledge of the break-in, the hackers responsible infiltrated a component of the Stanford Group’s network by exploiting vulnerabilities in the company’s web servers and databases. On the condition of anonymity, the investigator shared with this author files recovered from the breach, which were stored in plain text for at least several weeks on a website controlled by the attackers.
Continue reading »Bill could kill ISP safe harbor in cases of financial fraud
In the wake of the collapse of many a 401k and a Ponzi scheme or three, it’s no surprise that a bill called the Investor Protection Act of 2009 has attracted significant support in Congress. In 60 sections over 113 pages, the Act clarifies existing legislation and provides new oversight powers to the Securities Exchange Commission. But, buried on page 92, there’s language that would remove the safe harbor protections that keep ISPs from being liable for information transmitted over their networks, at least when that information involves a specific form of financial fraud.
Continue reading »Cable modem hacking expert indicted on fraud charges
Ryan Harris—known by the alias DerEngel—is an expert on cable modem hacking, an art that he describes at length in a 2006 instructional guide that was published by No Starch Press. He runs a small company that sells unlocked cable modems with custom firmware and provides instructional material that explains how to manipulate the devices in various ways. Although there are plenty of valid reasons for users to want complete access to their network hardware, cable modem hacking can also be used to circumvent ISP-imposed bandwidth caps and obtain free service through MAC address spoofing.
Continue reading »YouSendIt.com’s Founder Indicted of DoS attacks
US authorities accuse Khalid Shaikh, former CEO of file sharing site YouSendIt.com as being the one responsible for a series denial of service attacks on the site (DoS). The man who founded the large-files-transferring service back in 2004 and left the company two years later has been charged on four counts of mail fraud. Shaikh, allegedly prevented the YouSendIt.com’s services from being accessible to users four times between 2008-2009 when he managed to overpower the site’s servers by using the ApacheBench web server performance monitoring app.
Continue reading »Feds Charge Cable Modem Modder With Aiding ‘Computer Intrusion’
An Oregon hardware hacker and author has been hit with federal criminal charges arising from his longstanding business of selling unlocked cable modems that can be used to steal extra speed from a broadband provider, or obtain free service. Ryan Harris, known by his pen name DerEngel, was charged in Boston with a conspiracy count, and charges of aiding and abetting computer intrusion and wire fraud. “I read the indictment — it’s complete bullshit,” says 26-year-old Harris, author of the 2006 book Hacking the Cable Modem .
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