Jul. 13, 2018
A jury trial found a former engineer at a Navy contractor guilty of stealing trade secrets regarding Navy projects by uploading the files to his personal Dropbox account. The man, Jared Dylan Sparks, 35, of Ardmore, Oklahoma, worked as an electrical engineer for LBI, Inc., a company authorized to build unmanned underwater vehicles (drones) for the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research, and weather data-gathering buoys for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Sparks worked for LBI from January 2010 to December 2011, when he left for a similar position at Charles Rivers Analytics (CRA), another Navy contractor.
Jun. 12, 2018
Hackers have used a disk-wiping malware to sabotage hundreds of computers at a bank in Chile to distract staff while they were attempting to steal money via the bank’s SWIFT money transferring system. The attempted hack took place on May 24, this year. On that day, the Banco de Chile, the country’s biggest bank, reported all-around systems failures that affected the computers at several of its branches.
May. 24, 2018
Federal prosecutors have charged three men with carrying out a deadly hoax known as “swatting,” in which perpetrators call or message a target’s local 911 operators claiming a fake hostage situation or a bomb threat in progress at the target’s address — with the expectation that local police may respond to the scene with deadly force. While only one of the three men is accused of making the phony call to police that got an innocent man shot and killed, investigators say the other two men’s efforts to taunt and deceive one another ultimately helped point the gun. According to prosecutors,the tragic hoax started with a dispute over a match in the online game “Call of Duty.”
May. 24, 2018
A new report by the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has shown that complaints about scams and fraud are rising now at a record high and have resulted in reported losses of up to $1.42 billion In a typical BEC scam, a criminal dupes a company’s finance department into carrying out an unauthorized transfer of funds. Importantly, the target must be fooled into believing that the request has come from an executive within the company or from an outside firm that does business with it, so the scam involves a measure of social engineering, email spoofing, or computer intrusion.
May. 21, 2018
T-Mobile is investigating a retail store employee who allegedly made unauthorized changes to a subscriber’s account in an elaborate scheme to steal the customer’s three-letter Instagram username. The modifications, which could have let the rogue employee empty bank accounts associated with the targeted T-Mobile subscriber, were made even though the victim customer already had taken steps recommended by the mobile carrier to help minimize the risks of account takeover. So-called “port out” scams allow crooks to intercept your calls and messages while your phone goes dark.
May. 13, 2018
Psychic Zoe has not had a very good week. On 9 May the fortune-teller, whose real name is Ann Thompson, was arrested by the New York Police Department on suspicion of defrauding clients out of over $800,000. You’d think she might have had a premonition the police would be knocking at her door but, alas, the future isn’t always crystal clear.
May. 12, 2018
Man Allegedly Used Change Of Address Form To Move UPS Headquarters To His Apartment : The Two-Way Prosecutors say he received thousands of pieces of mail intended for the company, including checks and corporate credit cards. He is now facing federal charges. Dushaun Henderson-Spruce submitted a U.S. Postal Service change of address form on Oct. 26, 2017, according to court documents.
May. 9, 2018
Fresno, California, man has been sentenced by a federal judge to 18 months in prison after having pleaded guilty to firing a laser at a police helicopter. On Monday, Michael Alvarez became the latest person to be convicted in a string of prosecutions brought by Karen Escobar, an assistant United States attorney who is believed to be the nation’s most aggressive prosecutor for such cases.
May. 8, 2018
New data about the South Wales Police’s use of the technology obtained by Wired UK and The Guardian through a public records request shows that of the 2,470 alerts from the facial recognition system, 2,297 were false positives. In other words, nine out of 10 times, the system erroneously flagged someone as being suspicious or worthy of arrest.
May. 4, 2018
The artifacts were smuggled into the United States beginning in 2010, near the end of the Iraq War—falsely labeled as tile samples, and eventually intercepted by Customs and Border Protection. Hobby Lobby agreed to surrender them last year, forfeiting an additional $3 million, after a civil complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Apr. 26, 2018
Law enforcement appears to have seized Anon-IB, possibly the most infamous site focused on revenge porn—explicit or intimate images of people shared without their consent. Although it’s unclear whether Anon-IB members will make a replacement site, the apparent seizure is still a significant blow against people who share revenge porn.
Source: vice.com
Apr. 24, 2018
We leave traces of our genetic material everywhere, even on things we’ve never touched. That got Lukis Anderson charged with a brutal crime he didn’t commit. We leave traces of our genetic material everywhere, even on things we’ve never touched.
That got Lukis Anderson charged with a brutal crime he didn’t commit.
Source: themarshallproject.org
Apr. 23, 2018
Last April, I started a conversation with cybersecurity company Bromium. The company was keen to uncover where the streams of revenue generated by cybercrime eventually go and whether this money is ultimately supporting other areas of crime. Over the past 10 months, I have been examining this question, and I must say there have been some eyebrow-raising findings.
Source: venturebeat.com
Apr. 17, 2018
A pioneering fingerprint technique used to convict a drugs gang from a WhatsApp message ‘is the future’ of how police approach evidence to catch criminals.
Source: bbc.com
Mar. 26, 2018
In a simple, yet sort of terrifying video, YouTuber and locksmith “MM Developer” demonstrates how easy it is to break into a hotel room door with just a paper restaurant menu—no social engineering or lock-picking skills required.
Source: vice.com
Mar. 16, 2018
Last week, Motherboard reported that the FBI had arrested the CEO of Phantom Secure, a company allegedly providing custom, security-focused BlackBerry phones to the Sinaloa drug cartel, among other criminal groups. But the feds aren’t only going after Phantom’s owner: on Thursday, the Department of Justice announced an indictment against other apparent Phantom staff too, and confirmed what one source told Motherboard before it became public knowledge—that authorities have seized Phantom’s domains used for routing messages.
Mar. 14, 2018
There’s no such thing as the US criminal justice system. There are, instead, thousands of counties across the country, each with their own systems, made up of a diffuse network of sheriffs, court clerks, prosecutors, public defenders, and jail officials who all enforce the rules around who does and doesn’t end up behind bars. It’s hard enough to ensure that key details about a case pass from one node of this convoluted web to the other within a single county; forget about at the state or national level.
Mar. 12, 2018
On Saturday, Motherboard reported that the FBI has arrested the CEO of Phantom Secure, a company allegedly providing security-focused phones to international organized crime groups including the Sinaloa drug cartel. A key issue is whether Phantom deliberately created its product to help facilitate crime, which the criminal complaint alleges.
Source: vice.com
Mar. 6, 2018
When someone commits a crime, it’s safe to assume that person wants to get rid of the evidence; they may wear gloves, or conceal their identity. But criminals get caught, often on the most incidental oversights—some as small and seemingly innocent as a knot in a string.
Source: atlasobscura.com