{"id":13514,"date":"2014-06-03T23:08:23","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T15:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=13514"},"modified":"2014-06-03T23:11:51","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T15:11:51","slug":"us-disrupts-biggest-hacking-and-extortion-rings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/06\/03\/us-disrupts-biggest-hacking-and-extortion-rings\/","title":{"rendered":"US disrupts biggest hacking and extortion rings"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_11262\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11262\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/laptop-computer-hacking.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11262\" src=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/laptop-computer-hacking.jpg\" alt=\"SHUTTERSTOCK IMAGE\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\" srcset=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/laptop-computer-hacking.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/laptop-computer-hacking-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-11262\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">SHUTTERSTOCK IMAGE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>MANILA (via Reuters) \u2013 A crime ring infecting thousands of PCs around the globe with a malicious software used in stealing banking credentials and extorting computer owners, was disrupted by U.S.-led international operation, a Reuters report indicated.<\/p>\n<p>A Russian man was charged for hacking, fraud, money-laundering, and for writing the master software, known as \u201cGameover Zeus\u201d which according to court documents infected between 500,000 and 1 million machines worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>The said software was derived from the original \u201cZeus\u201d trojan in 2006 used for stealing financial passwords.<\/p>\n<p>The same Reuters report stated that other malicious programs were also generated amd installed by the same Gamover Zeus crew.<\/p>\n<p>Cryptolocker, a program which encrypted files and demanded release of payments infected more than 234,000 machines and won $27 million in ransom payments, according to the Justice Department.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese schemes were highly sophisticated and immensely lucrative, and the cyber criminals did not make them easy to reach or disrupt,\u201d Leslie Caldwell, who heads the Justice Department&#8217;s criminal division, said in a statement published in the same Reuters report.<\/p>\n<p>Dell expert Brett Stone-Gross, who assisted the FBI also said in the report that the Gameover Zeus &#8220;botnet&#8221; (robot network) is the largest disrupted program that relied on a peer-to-peer distribution method of infecting thousands of computers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We took control of the bots, so they would only talk with our infrastructure,&#8221; Stone-Gross said.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0(Story taken from a Reuters report by Joseph Menn in San Francisco, Jim Finkle in Boston and Aruna Viswanatha in Washington; Additional reporting by Julie Edwards and Alina Selyukh in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Ken Wills and Lisa Shumaker)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MANILA (via Reuters) \u2013 A crime ring infecting thousands of PCs around the globe with a malicious software used in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":11262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,17],"tags":[4573,352],"class_list":["post-13514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news-w","tag-malicious-software-disrupted","tag-us","mauthors-lei-fontamillas","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}