fbi

Prosecutor: Cloud computing is security's frontier

FORT BAKER, Calif.--As data moves to the cloud, attackers and thieves will follow, a federal prosecutor said on Friday.

The days of tracking down software counterfeiters in other countries who are selling pirated CDs are numbered as companies increasingly distribute software and store data online via hosted computing services, Matthew Parrella, an assistant U.S. attorney based in San Jose, Calif., said at Symantec's Norton Cyber Crime Day.

"That model of importation of software is becoming obsolete because we're seeing on the horizon cloud computing where so many of these operations are pushed from a user'… Read more

Mystery virus strikes FBI, U.S. Marshals

The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service were forced to shut down parts of their computer networks after a mystery virus struck the law-enforcement agencies Thursday, according to an Associated Press report.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service confirmed that it had disconnected from Justice Department computers as a precaution after being hit with the virus, while an FBI spokesperson would only say that it was experiencing similar issues, according to the report.

"We too are evaluating a network issue on our external, unclassified network that's affecting several government agencies," FBI spokesman Mike Kortan … Read more

DMCA conviction for seller of bogus Microsoft product keys

Federal authorities accused Adonis Gladney of selling counterfeit Microsoft product keys, and on Thursday he was convicted of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Gladney, 24, is believed to be the first person convicted for DMCA violations dealing with the circumvention of security protections on software, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian. Typically, product keys are used to activate software and are printed on Certificate of Authenticity labels that accompany legitimate products.

Missakian, who prosecuted the case in Los Angeles along with Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendy Wu, said the conviction is a sign that administrators at the … Read more

Q&A: FBI agent looks back on time posing as a cybercriminal

In September 2008 police began arresting alleged members of Dark Market, an underground Internet forum for buying and selling credit card data used for identity fraud. The sting wouldn't have been possible without the work of FBI agent J. Keith Mularski who spent two years infiltrating the group.

Mularski became hacker "Master Splynter," a play on the name of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle character called "Master Splinter," a rat who lives in New York City's sewers. He was so successful in his online disguise that he ended up running the server that hosted … Read more

FBI spyware used to nab hackers, extortionists

The FBI has used a secret form of spyware in a series of investigations designed to nab extortionists, database-deleting hackers, child molesters, and hitmen, according to documents obtained by CNET News.

One suspect used Microsoft's Hotmail to send bomb and anthrax threats to an undercover government investigator; another demanded a payment of $10,000 a month to stop cutting cables; a third was an alleged European hitman who was soliciting for business from a Hushmail.com account.

CNET News obtained the documents -- totaling hundreds of pages, although nearly all of them were heavily redacted -- this week through … Read more

FBI seizures highlight law as cloud impediment

The good folks at Cloudiquity.com pointed me to a couple of Threat Level articles from last week that highlight yet another example of how public policy and the law are often at odds with running a business in the cloud.

The articles report that the FBI raided at least two Texas data centers last week, serving search-and-seizure warrants for computing equipment, including servers, routers and storage. The FBI was seeking equipment that may have been involved in fraudulent business practices by a handful of small VoIP vendors.

The problem is that they didn't just grab the systems belonging to the VoIP vendors, but also hundreds of servers that served a wide variety of businesses, the vast majority of which had never dealt with or even heard of the companies under investigation, according to Threat Level. Companies interviewed complained of losing millions of dollars in lost revenue and equipment with no warning whatsoever.

One company, auto vendor marketing and inventory management vendor Liquid Motors, filed suit in a U.S. district court seeking a restraining order against the FBI that would force the return of the company's servers.

In what has to be one of the most scary verdicts for cloud users everywhere, the district court sided with the FBI and supported its probable-cause argument for holding on to the servers. Although the FBI was kind enough to copy the disk drives for Liquid Motors (on drives Liquid Motors had to provide), the precedent set here sends a shiver down my spine.

The issue, I think, is one of how search and seizure laws are being interpreted for assets hosted in third-party facilities. If the court upholds that servers can be seized despite no direct warrants being served on the owners of those servers (or the owners of the software and data housed on those servers), then imagine what that means for hosting your business in a cloud shared by thousands or millions of other users.

As I noted in a blog post last fall, there are a series of legal issues that really need to be addressed before external cloud services can truly be trusted. Here is what I argue must happen:… Read more

How online search traces helped lead to arrest

Ever wonder just how anonymous your online searches from a public library were? Ask Richard Leon Goyette, arrested Tuesday on federal charges involving 64 threatening letters with white powder and one bomb threat that were mailed October 17.

Goyette, 47, was arrested in an Albuquerque, N.M., airport after an investigation that involved the FBI and the U.S. Postal Service regarding the case. The letters, sent to JP Morgan Chase offices, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) from Amarillo, Texas, contained unidentified white powder and a threat that the person breathing it … Read more

Express Scripts clients threatened with extortion

One week after a breached corporate health care company refused to pay extortionists, the criminals now are seeking money from the corporate clients whose employee data might have been exposed.

St. Louis-based Express Scripts said on Tuesday that a limited number of its clients--which include government agencies, unions, and employers--have received letters threatening to expose the personal information of its members. The company said the letters sent to its clients were similar to the original extortion threat it received in October.

The company also said it was establishing a reward totaling $1 million to anyone providing information that results in … Read more

Extortion used in Express Scripts database breach

The customer database of Express Scripts, a company used by employer health care services to provide prescription medicine by mail, has been breached. In a twist, the company said it learned of the breach in "a letter from an unknown person or persons trying to extort money from the company."

The company posted details on its Web site Thursday. The letter, received in October, threatened to reveal millions of customer records--including Social Security numbers, addresses, dates of birth, and in some cases, prescription information--on the Internet if the extortion demands were not paid. The company did not disclose … Read more