A Twitter hacker who breached the accounts of celebrities including Barack Obama and Jeff Bezos has been forced to hand over £4million. Joseph James O’Connor, 26, was jailed in the US for the hacks which involved scamming people out of Bitcoin and threatening celebrities with the release of personal images and messages.
Now the CPS Proceeds of Crime Division has obtained a Civil Recovery Order to recover 42 Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, that O’Connor made from the scheme, which holds the value of around £4.1m.
Read more…
Source: The Crown Prosecution Service
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Mobile Malware and APT Espionage: Prolific, Pervasive, and Cross-Platform
October 23, 2019
Until now, the public’s exposure to mobile phone malware has been dominated by news about the privately run “greyware” vendors who have made headlines for being purveyors of spyware tools. These commercial smartphone spyware tools reportedly end up in the hands of autocrats who use it to hamper free speech, quash dissent, or worse. Consumers ...
- The Banking and Finance Industry Under Cybercriminal Siege: An Overview
October 22, 2019
Financial institutions have now taken on an even more active role in the growing information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) convergence. The need for 24/7-connected smart devices has driven the industry to adapt, especially with the wider adoption of the internet of things (IoT) among businesses and users. Unfortunately, this round-the-clock connection with their respective ...
- Major Airport Malware Attack Shines a Light on OT Security
October 18, 2019
A cryptomining infection managed to spread to half of all workstations at a major international airport in Europe – shining a spotlight on security for operational tech and IT convergence. Researchers at Cyberbit found the XMRig Monero mining malware, which was a known strain called “Playerz,” but which skated by antivirus solutions on the endpoints by adding a ...
- Phorpiex Botnet Shifts Gears From Ransomware to Sextortion
October 17, 2019
A recent wide-scale campaign indicates that a decade-old botnet is shifting gears from distributing ransomware to delivering millions of sextortion threats to innocent recipients. Worse, researchers say that the botnet’s spam campaign can affect up to 27 million potential victims. The botnet, Phorpiex, has been active for almost a decade and currently controls almost 500,000 computers globally. The ...
- Graboid: First-Ever Cryptojacking Worm Found in Images on Docker Hub
October 16, 2019
Unit 42 researchers identified a new cryptojacking worm we’ve named Graboid that’s spread to more than 2,000 unsecured Docker hosts. We derived the name by paying homage to the 1990’s movie “Tremors,” since this worm behaves similarly to the sandworms in the movie, in that it moves in short bursts of speed, but overall is ...
- Cybercrime Tool Prices Bump Up in Dark Web Markets
October 16, 2019
Prices have been rising in the last two years for longstanding tools available on the Dark Web to help bad actors commit cyber attacks and fraud, alongside newer innovations that are emerging to bolster crimes like ransomware and SIM swapping, new research has found. Keeping track of these trends in dark-web markets for the tools and ...