Tag Archives: Secret Service

In August, Albert Gonzalez was indicted for the theft of credit and debit card information from Hartland Payment Systems, the largest known breach of its kind, while awaiting trial for a similar attack against TJX, the second largest known breach of its kind.  Last week, Gonzalez pleaded guilty to nineteen charges relating to his role in the TJX breach (see Gonzalez’s 2008 indictment (.pdf) for list of the various charges).… More

Yesterday, Frederick Eugene Wood of Seattle was sentenced to 39 months in prison for using LimeWire peer-to-peer (P2P) software to obtain Social Security numbers, bank and financial records and tax returns, which he then used to commit identity theft.  The complaint (.pdf) filed in federal court for the Western District of Washington in March alleged that Wood took advantage of the fact that users sometime install LimeWire or other peer-to-peer software on computers without limiting the directories and files made available to the peer-to-peer network. … More

According to recent reports from the Wall Street Journal and Computerworld, on June 30 the United States Secret Service, the Italian police and Italian postal service reached an agreement for the establishment of an international task force to fight cybercrime, including identity theft and computer hacking.   Mark Sullivan, the director of the Secret Service, stated that cybercrime "is not a borderless crime and we believe there needs to be a reaction at an international level." … More

On the 4th of July an organized series of Denial of Service (DOS) attacks were launched against a number of U.S. government websites (including the White House, Treasury Department and the Federal Trade Commission websites), as well as several websites associated with the South Korean government and a handful of corporate targets (the Washington Post and Nasdaq stock exchange). [If you are wondering what a DOS/DDOS attack is,… More