The U.K. Government is seeking to keep most of the $7 billion in Bitcoin it seized in connection with a Chinese investment fraud, following the conviction of the fraud’s alleged organizer this week.
Zhimin Qian pleaded guilty on counts of possessing and transferring criminal property at Southwark Crown Court on Monday, following last year’s conviction of her assistant Seng Hok Ling (also known as Jian Wen) on similar counts. This conviction now raises the question of who will keep the 61,000 BTC originally seized by UK authorities in 2018, with upwards of 120,000 victims in China seeking compensation for their losses.
Read more…
Source: Decrypt News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Ransomware encrypts Australian cardiac clinic’s patient files
February 21, 2019
Employees of Melbourne Heart Group in Malvern, Australia, have been unable to access patients’ medical records following a January ransomware attack that encrypted the health care provider’s files. The cardiology clinic disclosed the incident today on its website’s home page. “We have been assured that no patient’s privacy has been compromised in any way,” the statement reads. ...
- Hackers Use Compromised Banks as Starting Points for Phishing Attacks
February 19, 2019
Cybercriminals attacking banks and financial organizations use their foothold in a compromised infrastructure to gain access to similar targets in other regions or countries. In a report released today and shared with BleepingComputer, international security company Group-IB specialized in preventing cyber attacks describes a so called cross-border domino-effect that can lead to spreading an infection beyond the initial ...
- FBI arrests second Apophis Squad hacker in the US
February 13, 2019
The FBI arrested yesterday a hacker part of a hacking team known as Apophis Squad. This is the second arrest of an Apophis Squad member after UK cops arrested a teenager in August 2018. The two, US and UK citizens, respectively, have been charged in an indictment unsealed by the US Department of Justice yesterday. They stand ...
- Attackers Completely Destroy VFEmail’s Secure Mail Infrastructure
February 12, 2019
A catastrophic, smash-and-destroy cyberattack has eliminated the U.S. infrastructure for secure email service VFEmail. It’s a rare example of a purely destructive offensive, apparently unmotivated by financial gain or espionage goals. An attacker wiped out the company’s U.S. servers on Monday evening, including backups, destroying almost two decades worth of user data in just a few ...
- Trickbot Adds Remote Application Credential-Grabbing Capabilities to Its Repertoire
February 12, 2019
In November 2018, we covered a Trickbot variant that came with a password-grabbing module, which allowed it to steal credentials from numerous applications. In January 2019, we saw Trickbot (detected as TrojanSpy.Win32.TRICKBOT.AZ and Trojan.Win32.MERETAM.AD) with new capabilities added to its already extensive bag of tricks. Its authors clearly aren’t done updating Trickbot — we recently found a ...
- How your stolen personal data is sent to the dark web, and what hackers can do with it
February 10, 2019
“It’s 6.5 billion now,” the cybersecurity specialist says, standing in his office in Kowloon, Hong Kong, overlooking a control room where glowing computer screens display the pulse being taken of nefarious web activity. One dial acts as an algorithm-generated odometer for internet threat levels, while a pulsing world map shows regions from which cyberattacks and ...