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It was a crime of staggering sophistication by computer hackers who figured out a new way to get rich.
In a case that became known as Trident Breach, the hackers stole $70 million from the payroll accounts of some 400 American companies and organizations – all from the safety of their homes in Eastern Europe.
“I think it’s the perfect definition of organized crime,” said FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry. “It’s very well organized. It’s very well-structured. It requires many people operating in unison, in a collaborative way.”
At the beginning of 2008, the group of hackers compromised hundreds of thousands of Americans computers using a malicious computer “Trojan” bug called ZeuS. When computer users clicked on certain attachments and e-mail links, ZeuS infected their computers.
ZeuS is designed to zero in on users’ bank information. For example, when a user visits a bank website, ZeuS knows; and since it is a key logger program, it records the user's keystrokes as he or she enters usernames and passwords. It then sends that information by instant text message to waiting hackers, who then have access to the compromised accounts.
Henry is one of the country’s top cybercrime fighters. He says Americans are increasingly prone to “virtual gangs” prying on people’s personal data stored on their computers.
“We have organized groups that have developed internationally where groups of people have come together, each with a very specific capability and skill, who have never met each other in the physical world, but they meet online in a collaborative way,” he said.
Henry says that the security breaches have the potential to be more than just criminal acts. They could pose a national security risk.
“There are foreign intelligence services that are aggressively pursuing American technology. They’re aggressively pursuing American strategy. They’re looking at the American military, the American consumer, the American corporations, research and development organizations, laboratories, educational facilities,” Henry said. “The amount and value of data that is on the network is at an unprecedented level. Our adversaries know that that data is there. It’s information and information is valuable."
Money Mules Help Hackers Get $70 Million
In the Trident Breach case, the hackers were able to get their hands on the cash by turning people into money mules.
Beginning in late 2008, they created some 3000 money mules, many of them unwitting Americans, by luring them into work-at-home jobs requiring "employees" to open bank accounts.
“The first money mule activity we started seeing was people who would receive an email saying, ‘You can get a work-at-home job’ and the work-at-home job would be something like transaction manager for an international company,” said Prof. Gary Warner of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who teaches a program that combines computer forensics and justice studies.
Warner is also a member of the little-known FBI-affiliated group called InfraGard, comprising some 50,000 members across the United States who keep an eagle eye on U.S . critical infrastructure: power plants, water supply, security and financial services…and the internet. Warner said the hackers transferred cash from business payroll-type "ACH" (Automated Clearing House) accounts to the mule accounts and the mules sent the cash by Western Union or MoneyGram to Eastern Europe, taking eight or 10 percent commission.
Warner said that when the banks started to get wise to the hackers’ work-at-home schemes, and set up roadblocks, the hackers then recruited dozens of students, mainly from southern Russia, to be a new breed of money mule.
“It’s still a little gray whether the students who were recruited knew that they were being recruited for crime,” Warner said.
The hackers obtained fake passports for the students, U.S. J1 work/study visas, and packed their new mules off to the United States. The students opened multiple bank accounts, mainly in the New York area, where they received stolen cash. Then, just as the mules before them had, they wired the cash back to their bosses.
University Professor Helps FBI Crack Cybercrime Case
So stealthy was their ZeuS operation, neither the hackers nor the mules had counted on getting caught. But, using complex data mining techniques, Prof. Warner established links between ZeuS-infected computers and traced the origins of the mass infection to Ukraine; and many of the hackers and their mules were caught.
But 18 mules remained at large in the United States. And after the FBI published a wanted poster of the students, Warner’s students began using what they’d learned in class to track the criminals.
“So the students used the techniques we had taught them during investigating online crime [class] and began crawling Facebook pages and VKontakte, which is a Russian version similar to Facebook and were able to quickly identify profile pages of almost all of them, at-large mules,” Warner said.
Warner’s students discovered one of the students-turned-mules had brazenly posted pictures of herself with a wad of hundred-dollar bills. Another had posted a picture of himself dressed in an “I ❤ New York” top, arms aloft, celebrating in a bar with his friends – some of whom turned out to be other money mules. And another was pictured standing next to the new car he has presumably just bought.
Though all the mules – except one – were arrested, that does not necessarily mean the end of the money mules, says Gary Warner.
“ZeuS infections are rampant still today. There are probably millions of computers in the United States that have active Zeus on their machines right now,” Warner said.
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Why can't people stick to the topic the article was written about?
Thanks, students!
Maybe they could draw up a nice federal budget, since no one else seems to be able to do. Nice job young people!
Hmmmmm....will Norten 360 contain it????
Would running Virtual machines like VMware eliminate the problem?
i dont know much about this ZeuS trojan. But it seems to be something that gets installed because the user clicked on some spam e-mail. This is not microsoft's fault. Also if you have a wireless router at home, I am hoping you have all of the ports blocked except for the ones that you know that needs to be turned on. Some basic computer security can really go a long way.
Computer security is just a myth. Cyber crime is still the safest and highest paying job ever. Many drug traffickers and organized crime have switched careers from drug trafficking to cyber crimes. This problem will be with us for a much longer time now that organized crime have found a much better milking cow. Companies like PayPal and even the credit card networks just treat this as the cost of doing business.
can't agree more. read some article in the economist or businessweek that talked about whole eastern european boom towns due to cyber crime.
We really need to teach everyone the basics to computer security in high school. Speaking of which i just noticed an 100 dollar charge from "credit card registry" on my amex card...............i wonder where that came from?
And I thought our new Multi Billion Federal org which issues Passports, What is it now Homeland Security ? was able to detect fake ones.
Wow, some of you people are down right depressing. The Article told about a problem. They are trying to help fix it... It is not easy or all you computer geeks would have done it... There are lots of problems in this world some are easy to fix some not so..If you think that you can do better and from the sound of some of you, yes, do it and get it written on paper so that we all know who we can thank for keeping our computers hack free... We all need a little common sense in this world and I can read from some of you that is lacking..Lighten up. I read the article and probably did not get all the computer geek stuff, but from the sound of the discussion afterward not many said anything constructive either..
This just goes to show the world...........that paying high wages and placing a professional title on a person doesn't make them worthy of the wadges they are getting paid; "we the people" need to pay the students in a classroom setting instead!! I say cut the government departments and let our students solve all of the theft problems. Hell!! "we the people" can solve America budget problem and elect our students in the classrooms to be our elected public servants too! Then cancel their student loan!! College should be free!!! Just my thoughts!
What a story like this could add, is if computers with common anti virus programs would have been protected against Zeus, or not.
"I say we take off and re-format the hard drive from orbit............. it's the only way to be sure!!.... :)
Just saying for all you OS lovers/haters out there. There is only one system that is not hackable and that is VMS. Still running it today. Look it up. Digital Equipment Corp. created it. Almost every software concept you know today was born from this operating system and its layered products and databases. there will never be another VMS. Thats why all the financial institutions like mastercard and such have run VMS systems for years.
Ah.....This was pretty refreshing - An entire thread without one single political post or attack on Obama...
LOL...
It has it now.. with all the "mine is the better OS" I felt that we should go ahead and drag that and even religion into the posting like on posting page... it is the same mentality. S
orry to ruin it for you Kevin...
And how to find if we are infected?
DID ANYBODY ACTUALLY SEE THIS STATEMENT: "The hackers obtained fake passports for the students, U.S. J1 work/study visas, and packed their new mules off to the United States."
So, here we are, doing our darnest to keep out "Mexican illegals" who are trying to kill, steal and addict us to drugs (irony / sarcasm) and we let in a bunch of Russians (white, Europeans) with FAKE passports and FAKE work/study visas.
Your tax dollars at work.
They never took a byte out of an Apple.
When people could live without computers because the 'system' they served was less techie and therefore less 'convenient', the US Government went all out to compel advance by the civilian populace into the waiting arms of big bother. In time, no one believed life was possible WITHOUT a computer since EVERYONE had one... NOW, we are become victims of those who hold all the hidden strings to the puppet we call civilization. Who holds the strings? Who must dance?
Win7 for two years, not a crash or a virus yet. Linux is for the nerds who like to tinker (fix) their os after the install for the next two weeks, apple anything is way over-priced and too limited.
I work for a software development company in the US, and we have found that US Banks are Outsourcing their Programming to programmers that reside in foreign countries. The programmers work for for cheaper labor rates so outsourcing seems like a cost effective idea. But what the Banks are finding, is that if they have their IT managers/programmers here in the US review the code that these foreign programmers have written, they are finding that these foreign programmers have left "backend hooks" in these programs, so that they can easily hack back into the banking system, using these programs so that they can steal money from the banks. So America's Banks need to learn quickly that Cheap Labor - from foreign countries isn't going to pay off for them in the end.
Its obama's fault! Just kidding. lol.
You could simply NOT bank online lol.
OMG.. the are the "nerd" version of "standard" news postings .. An article on computer crime being solved and within a few comments the story is totally forgotten and it is a "which is better" debate... Seriously, by the time I am done reading the garbage that so many of you feel (apparently) pertinent to the story, I have forgotten what the dang story is about!
Well I say it was BUSH'S fault.. No wait.. It is Obama's fault... Wait, let me go check the other message boards to get an opinion (which seems to be where so many posting get THEIR thoughts/opinions) and come back to let you know.
Or is it Christian or the "mindless sheep that believe"...?
There. Now all the posting pages look alike. (sorry, I can't bring myself to curse at any of you as in so many posts, just express my shock at the silliness of all this "My politics/religion/OS/grammer is better than yours" mentality).
I have to tip my hat to the academics who solved this crime.
Unfortunately, there are probably no totally secure networks or systems. Like a physical lock, if the human mind can create it, a human mind can circumvent it.
This isn't a Microsoft, or apple, or whoever's operating system's problem. It's a severe US security problem. OUR government should work with software companies (for a fee) and fix the "holes". The mules should be hunted down and arrested, then deported. We are way past "midnight" on this one. It's only going to get worse, and some how, I just don't trust one or two or three companies to fix this.
When we speak of Eastern Europen are we talking about "Ashkenazi's?
If so, the central bank(s) are all Rothchild's whom own the federal reserve and rip-off the US everyday.
Why is this any different?
Don't expect the FBI or CIA to respond to this issue; they are bought also.
BTW, I am not a radical MUSLIM!