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  • (Image source: Wikimedia Commons) 


  • BY ALEX MALLIN 

Seven years, 160 million credit cards

  • and immeasurable losses. American prosecutors have indicted five members of a band of foreign

  • cybercriminals who one U.S. attorney says executed the largest data heist ever.

  • The group hacked into the servers of payment processing companies and stole customers'

  • personal dataincluding credit card numbersin order to sell it. (Via CNBC)

  • The victims include some of the U.S.' biggest businesses: Nasdaq, 7-Eleven, Dow Jones, Visa

  • and J. C. Penney are just a few of the more than 17 companies that had their servers infiltrated.

  • (Via CRN) 
U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman says the current

  • tally on the amount of money lost sits at $300 millionand that's just from three

  • of the victim companies. 
"And that, by the way, is our conservative

  • estimate of the lossesthe amount we've been able to confirm so far. ... The actual

  • loss figure may well be much, much higher." (Via ABC)

  • Attorneys in the case say the defendants used malware and sophisticated hacking methods

  • to mine customer data and then sell it on message boards. (Via WGCL)

  • Their customers would pay $10 for every American card, while European cards went for

  • $50 each. (Via The Christian Science Monitor) 
The five men indicted are from Russia and

  • the Ukraine, but only two of them are currently in custody. Fishman described them as patient,

  • saying they would sometimes stake out a company for months before attacking it.

  • They would then brag about their work over instant messaging, with one of the men saying

  • he had a Google Alert set up so he could read news stories about his exploits. (Via The

  • Washington Times) 
The alleged hackers could face up to 30

  • years in prison and a fine of $1 million just for the charge of wire fraud.

  • 
"If convicted, they will also be ordered to repay the victims for the losses they have

  • caused. And the losses in this case are staggering." (Via The Record)

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons) 


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