By Kelley Chittenden

Vladimir Drinkman and Dmitriy Smilianets pleaded guilty this week to involvement in the largest computer hacking conspiracy ever prosecuted in the United States. The men infiltrated sixteen companies’ networks including NASDAQ, 7-Eleven Inc., France’s Carrefour S.A., J.C. Penney Company Inc., JetBlue Airways, a Visa Inc. licensee, and Heartland Payment Systems, Inc., compromising over 160 million credit card numbers and racking up more than 300 million dollars in losses over nearly seven years. Drinkman had been in U.S. custody since his extradition to the United States after a June 2012 arrest in the Netherlands. Three other men involved in the hacking of security networks and mining of personal data, Aleksandr Kalinin, Roman Kotov, and Mikhail Rytikov, still remain at large.

Read More

September 24, 2015

By Jenny Park

In December, the White House blamed North Korea for hacking Sony Pictures (Sony’s confidential information was leaked and the hackers threatened attacks on movie theaters that would play The Interview, a political satire comedy poking fun at Kim Jong-un). Now, the White House has authorized the US Treasury discretionary power to impose sanctions against perpetrators of cyber-attacks on US assets and infrastructure. President Obama declared cyber-attacks as “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges.” The White House stressed that this new power will not target internet free speech and will not replace traditional law enforcement responses to cyber-attacks.

Read More

May 05, 2015