Cybercrime and Orcut!

May 02,2010
An engineer from Mumbai , Mohammed Ali,was arrested for posting on Orcut the name and telephone number of ,Lisa Ferrera , his neighbour!
He described her as a commercial sex worker!!!!!!

Other Orkut members saw this profile and start calling her at all hours of the day asking for sex. This leads to a lot of harassment for the victim and also defames her in society.
Lisa was completely shocked when she saw it and said that"I am mentally harassed".
Then Lisa and her husband filed a complaint, Ali was arrested and has put  under police custody.
http://www.crime-research.org/news/02.05.2008/3343/

Two men were arrested due to stealing data

Sujeet Katiyar and Santosh Joshi  from Mumbai, were Two former employees of a software development company for homeopathy sites. Sujeet Katiyar was a project manager in the company. He was provided with a laptop, internet stick connection, USB data stick and so on.

They stole their employer`s data code, patent software and other data. Then they started their own company.

The cyber crime investigating cell of the Mumbai police picked up Sujeet Katiyar and Santosh Joshi  from their office in Kurla. Their crimes were: cheating, breach of trust and various other sections of Information Technology (IT) Act.

you can find more information in below link

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Cyber-crime-cell-arrests-two-men-for-stealing-data/articleshow/6790134.cms

London police arrest 19 in cybercrime online banking scam

This cybercrime ring could steal £6 million from online bank accounts. This ring was include of  fiftheen men and four women.
They hacked into thousands of computers  by using malware and then could steal money from people's online bank accounts. These attacks used a Zbot trojan called ZeuS,( it is a malware that is recently used to attack business social networking site too.)

It was not the first time people have been arrested for using the ZeuS trojan to steal money!
In November of 2009 a couple from Manchester were arrested for the same crime too. It shows that how dangerous the malware is and how many hackers are currently using  it for their evil schemes!
http://www.techeye.net/security/london-police-arrest-19-in-cybercrime-online-banking-scam

Facebook spammer had to pay $711 million

A  Las Vegas resident ,Sanford Wallace, is known "Spam King" due to his big spamming. He could access to the account of Facebook members without their permission and sent them phony wall posts and messages. A California judge convicted him for bombarding the web site with junk messages and awarded Facebook $711 million in damages against Sanford Wallace!

"We won another battle in the fight against spam," said Facebook, which announced the Oct. 29 ruling on its Web site on Friday.

Previously, Sanford was successfully sued by other online companies too;

In May ,2008, MySpace won a $230 million against Wallace for sending junk messages.

Wallace was also fined $4 million by the Federal Trade Commission in 2006 for his excessive pop-up ads.
http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/sanford-wallace-facebook-spammer-fined-711-million-2505481.html

A twenty-year prison sentence for a hacker!

Albert Gonzales With the help of some individuals could steal 90 million credit and debit cards from TJ Maxx (TJX) and other retailers! He was a U.S. Secret Service informant with 75000$ annual salary during 2005- 2008 and The Secret Service could not be aware of his activities until 2008!!!!!!
He called his scheme “Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin'.

Albert Gonzales is the first hacker in history that his sentence was twenty years in prison. In addition to his lengthy prison sentence, he also had to pay 25,000$ as cash fine!!!
You can find further information about how he did his evil scheme in below link.
http://www.brighthub.com/internet/security-privacy/articles/74653.aspx

Bank and Credit Card Fraud

Kenneth Flury was charged with bank fraud and conspiracy. He was  a member of a large credit-card fraud ring that was known “Shadowcrew” as It`s nickname, it included over 4,000 members. Kenneth was one of the Shadowcrew leaders.he attempted to defraud Citibank by obtaining stolen debit card accounts, PINs and other personal identifier information from account holders.
He used other individuals to get the Citibank information for him. When he obtained the data, he used it to get cash advances.
He could steal over $384,000 by this way, But $167,000 of it was then transferred to pay off the individuals who sent him the information.

This was a huge cybercrime case that the US Secret Service got involved in 2004. It was part of the “Operation Firewall” investigation.
Result:
In 2006, Kenneth Flury was convicted 32 months in prison and 3 years of supervised release. He also must pay $300,000 in restitution to Citibank.
http://www.brighthub.com/internet/security-privacy/articles/70972.aspx

Illegal Computer Monitoring

Kenneth Kwak was a network security employee of the DoE (Department of Education). He gained unauthorized access to the data and obtained information from D0E computer by putting a software on his supervisor’s computer  in order to gain access to his personal files and Internet activities. After viewing his supervisor’s information, he disclosed it to other employees. This cybercrime case was investigated by the Computer Crime Investigations Division of the Department of Education Inspector General's Office.

Result
Kenneth Kwak was sentenced to 5 months in prison in 2006 with 3 months of home confinement that includes electronic monitoring. He also had to pay $40,000 back to the US Government.

http://www.brighthub.com/internet/security-privacy/articles/70972.aspx

Denial of Service Attacks - US vs. Jason Arabo

A Michigan resident ,Jason Arabo, with help from a 16-year-old hacker ,Sigh, attacked to his competitor`s websites in order to take down the websites. He taught that his own business will improve if he prevented people from visiting and using the services of his competitors.
About 2000 PCs were infected by some programs that allowed him to have remote access!
Sigh used "DDOS" Denial of service attack and caused crashing the computer servers of competitors,even competitor as far as Europe!

Result:
FBI investigation discovered the cybercrime and Jason Arabo was sentenced to 30 months in prison and charged with $504,495 in damages. Sigh Cheema was sentenced to 5 years in youth detention and was required to pay $32,000 in restitution.
http://www.brighthub.com/internet/security-privacy/articles/70972.aspx

'Facebook crimes' are up by 346%

There was a considerable increase in Facebook crimes in Nottinghamshire between April 2008 and March 2009!
13 alleged offences in this county went up  to 58 in the following 11 months; It means that a rise of 346%.!!!!
Nottinghamshire police has said that harassment was the crime most frequently linked to the site in the past year.The site came under pressure for not doing enough to protect children.

Here there is a real case of actual bodily harm:
Peter Chapman, 33-year-old man is a serial sex attacker. He was arrested  and being jailed for raping and murdering Ashleigh Hall, 17-old-year, of Darlington, Co Durham, after befriending her on the Facebook and using a false identity!!!!

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/04/02/facebook-crimes-are-up-by-346-115875-22156469/

Although facebook is responsible for protecting its members, people are more responsible to protect themselves from internet perils. I think in these cases parents should pay more attention to their childs and their communication`s networks.Also they have to give enough information about internet perils that their children may face with, and the ways they can avoid to becoming a victim in cyberspace.

cheating does not prosper!!!

Cheating in chatrooms
A 27-year-old man was arrested by police for cheating a Mumabi based software engineer through internet!!
He played the role of a woman and used a voice converter to change his voice, also forwarded a photo of a woman. After befriending through chat the engineer, provided a credit card and code to 'Renuka' (fanciful girl)  to withdraw Rs2,500 for purchasing a flight ticket to Mumbai, also the engineer even booked a room for 'Renuka'. But Renuka disappeared and enquiries revealed that Rs22,000 was withdrawn using the credit card!!!!!!

In these cases it`s really difficult to find and sue the cheaters!!!!
Also it`s your responsibility to make sure about your friends in cyberspace.
Nowadays there are many cheaters and fraudulents in chatrooms waiting for your mistake and your trust to abuse you; they can abuse you in several ways; Financial, Emotional and even Sexual abuse. So it`s essential for all of us to know completely whom we are chatting with!
DON`T TRUST EVERYONE!!!!!!!!
http://cybercrime.planetindia.net/man_arrested_in%20cyber_fraud.htm

eBay phishing scams

What is eBay?
eBay .com is probably the largest market place in the world! On eBay items are sold trough auction or direct purchases with 'BUY NOW'. You can find anything you need on it; these days it includes even real estate properties, airplanes, cars and more. There are many people running their businesses on this site and making lost of profit monthly.

The importance of information at eBay
If you run a business on eBay, your information is so important because your eBay account will be linked to your Pay pal account and will also have your credit card number and other such  important details.
Scammers are able to have your information in their hands and thereby will cause you to lose your online business or start again. Also they may buy products using your eBay account and u will be responsible for that not them!!!!!

eBay phishing email
An eBay scam usually try to distress you with a warning email subject  for example: " your account has been suspend" or "change your password" and may also be formatted to  like a legitimate email. But there are some points with which you can identify the fraud ; the email will not be addressed to you and the given link on it, will not be from the eBay.com web site.
You can see examples of eBay phishing email here

As you can see in these two examples there are two important point that show they are fraud;

1. They are not sent to a particular name or users.

2. The given link on them is not for eBay.com site

How can we protect ourselves from eBay phishing attacks?

• Do not respond immediately! Take a moment to go through the email and try to find the fraud points. 
• If it doesn't have your name or eBay username ,it's probably a scam!
• Is the link you are asked to click on from the eBay.com web site?
• Is the eBay logo included in the message?
• If you are indeed upset by a email, open a new browser window and go to the eBay.com web site instead of clicking a link from the email.

You can find more information by
http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/articles/ebay_phishing_examples_advice.php

The importance of this topic (TRUST)

Previously in this weblog, I posted some real cases about computer crimes to present the negative results of BLINDLY TRUST in cyberspace, in order to give you some NOTIFICATION SIGNALS.

As we all know in today`s world most of us are doing almost all of our works (except physical works) through Internet and digital devices; from daily works like talking to each other, shopping, doing assignments to even paying the bills and making critical contract about financial cases. Hens it is essential for all of us to know and be aware of the whole environment and its situation, we are using to drive our lives on it; including:

what potential perils exist in this environment?
How they can create problems for us?
What kind of problem may be created by Internet? Financial,social,legal or ...?
What are the activities we must never do in cyberspace?
And what are the activities we must do in order to prevent these problems?
I am providing the other real cases that were occurred by Internet criminals recently and will publish them in this weblog to give you more information that you may need to protect yourselves and your rights from Internet crimes.
I will be very glad if this blog be able to create useful information for you.
Thank you
Sahar