College students crack $70 million cybercrime ring

Rock Center

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.”

Computerworld - SAN FRANCISCO -- Malware tools that allow attackers to gain complete remote control of smartphones have become a serious threat to users around the world, security researchers say.

In a demonstration at the RSA Conference 2012 here Wednesday, former McAfee executives George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch, who recently founded security firm CrowdStrike, installed a remote access tool on an Android 2.2-powered smartphone by taking advantage of an unpatched flaw in WebKit, the default browser in the OS.

The researchers showed an overflow audience how the malware can be delivered on a smartphone via an innocuous looking SMS message and then be used to intercept and record phone conversations, capture video, steal text messages, track dialed numbers and pinpoint a user's physical location.

Negligence is the biggest cause of data breaches at corporations, but criminal attacks are growing fastest, a study released today concludes.The average cost of a data breach for a victimized organization increased to $7.2 million, and the average cost per record came to $214, up $10 from the previous year, according to the 2010 Annual Study: U.S. Cost of a Data Breach, which was conducted by the Ponemon Institute and based on data supplied by 51 U.S. companies across 15 different industry sectors.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20040861-245.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20