By Stephen Cobb
Cybersecurity can at times be a strange career, one
in which good news is sometimes defined as no news, as in: Hooray! We haven’t
been hacked today! And some of cybersecurity’s good news is bad news for
other people, for example: “Teen behind Titanium DDoS Stresser pleads guilty in
London”. Yet even some of this good news is hard to enjoy. I would not use
“happy” to describe my reaction to that headline; more like “sad”
because a young man made some bad choices and recovering from the
consequences of those choices will be difficult for him.
Then again, you can also say that one less bad
actor active in cyberspace is always good news for all those who spend their
time defending information systems. So, at this time of the year, when word of
good tidings is either on our minds, or on the radio, or both, I decided to
highlight some wins for the good people who are working to keep the bad people
in check.
Below you will find 20 success stories in the
struggle against cybercrime. They range from indictments to arrests,
extraditions to sentencing. These reports are not placed in any particular
order or ranking and I have probably missed some cases. I made the URLs
explicit so you can see the range of publications now covering these events,
and I decided not to comment on each case individually in order to stress
their cumulative impact. Taken together they demonstrate the extent to which
cybercrime has become a part of modern life and, in turn, an increase
in resources devoted to deterring it.
Looking at this list I get the sense that
law enforcement efforts in cyberspace bore more fruit in 2016 than in any
other year, and that is good news. Here’s hoping for an even better year
in 2017!
1.
Hacker Gets 4
Years in Prison for Selling Stolen Bank Accounts on the Dark Web – https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hacker-gets-4-years-in-prison-for-selling-stolen-bank-accounts-on-the-dark-web/
2.
Russian
Hacker Suspected in Massive LinkedIn Breach Arrested Overseas – http://abcnews.go.com/US/russian-hacker-suspected-massive-linkedin-breach-arrested-overseas/story?id=42912836
3.
Joint Cyber
Operation Takes Down Avalanche Criminal Network Servers Enabled Nefarious
Activity Worldwide – https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/joint-cyber-operation-takes-down-avalanche-criminal-network
4.
Feds Accuse
Two 19-Year-Olds Of Hacking For Lizard Squad and PoodleCorp – http://motherboard.vice.com/read/feds-accuse-two-19-year-olds-of-hacking-for-lizard-squad-and-poodlecorp
5.
2 Israelis
arrested for major hacking operation after FBI tip-off – http://www.timesofisrael.com/2-israelis-arrested-for-major-hacking-operation-after-fbi-tip-off/
6.
The hacker
behind world’s largest-ever bank hack arrested in Russia – http://www.techworm.net/2016/10/hacker-behind-worlds-largest-ever-bank-hack-arrested-russia.html
7.
North
Carolina men arrested, charged with hacking senior U.S. officials (Crackas with
Attitude) – http://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-carolina-men-arrested-charged-hacking-senior-us-officials/
8.
Teen Behind
Titanium DDoS Stresser Pleads Guilty in London: used to launch over 1.7 million
DDoS attacks – http://news.softpedia.com/news/teen-behind-titanium-ddos-stresser-pleads-guilty-in-london-509811.shtml
9.
Global
authorities arrest 34 in DDoS bust; suspects mostly teenagers – https://www.scmagazine.com/global-authorities-arrest-34-in-ddos-bust-suspects-mostly-teenagers/article/578671/
10.
Police
arrested a hacker who allegedly triggered a DDoS attack on the 911 emergency
call system – http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/30/13471128/meetkumar-hiteshbhai-desai-arrest-911-exploit
11.
Accused Pippa
Middleton hacker arrested by London police – http://www.today.com/video/accused-pippa-middleton-hacker-arrested-by-london-police-772772931547
12.
NSA
contractor arrested in hacking plot – http://nypost.com/2016/10/05/nsa-contractor-arrested-in-hacking-plot/
13.
Kennesaw
State Student Arrested for Hacking School Computer: Faces up to 15 years in
jail – http://www.teenvogue.com/story/kennesaw-state-student-arrested-for-hacking-school-computer
14.
Three men
arrested in connection with mobile handset upgrade fraud enabled by
unauthorised access to customer data – http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450403170/Hackers-arrested-in-Three-mobile-upgrade-scam
15.
Florida
Computer Programmer Arrested For Hacking Linux Kernel Organization and the
Linux Foundation – https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/florida-computer-programmer-arrested-hacking
16.
FBI Arrests
Customer of Xtreme Stresser DDoS-for-Hire Service – https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fbi-arrests-customer-of-xtreme-stresser-ddos-for-hire-service/
17.
Three
Romanians indicted in $4 million cyber fraud ring – http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/12/three_romanians_indicted_in_va.html
(not to be confused with the 3 Romanians extradited to the US in 2013
– https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/newyork/press-releases/2013/three-members-of-international-cyber-fraud-ring-extradited-from-romania-to-the-united-states)
18.
Suspected JP
Morgan hacker arrested after returning from Moscow – http://www.cbsnews.com/news/joshua-samuel-aaron-suspected-jp-morgan-hacker-arrested-after-returning-from-moscow/
19.
Hacker known
as Guccifer sentenced to 52 months in prison – https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/guccifer-hacker-who-revealed-clintons-use-of-a-private-email-address-sentenced-to-52-months/2016/09/01/4f42dc62-6f91-11e6-8365-b19e428a975e_story.html
20.
British
booter bandit walks free after pleading guilty to malware sales – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/11/grant_manser_sold_50k_in_stressers_sidesteps_slammer/
Notes on cybercrime and “the cyber”
The US will inaugurate a new president in
January amid an unprecedented level of controversy and concern about what the president-elect
once referred to as “the cyber”. Amidst all the talk, there is a worrying
tendency to bundle cybercrime with other unwelcome activities in
cyberspace. Allow me to explain.
As a presidential candidate Mr. Trump talked
about the need to make cybersecurity “a major priority for both the
government and the private sector” (those words come from the official text of
candidate Trump’s speech on cybersecurity, as “prepared for delivery”
and archived on the wonderful WayBack Machine). He went on to say:
“Cyber-attacks from foreign governments, especially
China, Russia, and North Korea along with non-state terrorist actors and
organized criminal groups, constitute one of our most critical national
security concerns.” [emphasis added]
Unfortunately, while this sounds good, it is not
entirely accurate: the three different threats enumerated in that sentence are
not one and the same thing, and not all cybercrimes are a matter of national
security. To be clear, Mr. Trump is not alone in his conflation of these
things, we hear it a lot when government contractors, especially defense
contractors, talk about cybersecurity. I agree that all three threats are real,
but the response to each needs to be very different, and fighting cybercrime as
though it is a matter of national defense makes no sense.
To Mr. Trump’s credit, some of those prepared
remarks do specifically call for a law enforcement pursuit of criminals in
addition to a militaristic response to terrorist and nation state activity in
cyberspace. Unfortunately, other remarks return to conflated thinking, lapsing
into dogma with which a lot of security professionals would disagree, such as:
“We should turn cyber warfare into one of our greatest weapons against the
terrorists.” Frankly, I don’t think that is a good idea, and I’d be happy to
explain to the new administration why I think that.