2008’s biggest tech crime stories

 

Here is the collection of biggest 2008 tech crime stories, grilled out from the darkest corners of the internet…

Read the self-confessions of hackers below and feel the chills running through your spine.

1. The spam King

In a boon for email users everywhere, the man whom prosecutors had dubbed "The Spam King" was sentenced to 47 months in prison earlier this year after he pleaded guilty to fraud, spamming and tax evasion in July. Described as one of the world's 10 worst spammers at the time of his arrest by a Microsoft attorney, Soloway, 28, was first sued for spamming by Microsoft in 2003. Despite losing a $7 million civil judgment to Microsoft back in 2005, Soloway continued to send out massive spam up until his arrest in May 2007. In addition to being sentenced to nearly four years in jail, Soloway will also have to serve three years of probation and perform 200 hours of community service.

2. 40 million credit card numbers stolen using SQL Injection

The US Department of Justice revealed this summer that a group of hackers used a combination of wardriving(act of searching for Wi-Fi wireless in a moving vehicle using a laptop or PDA), sniffer software and SQL injection attacks to steal over 40 million credit and debit card numbers from TJX, OfficeMax, Barnes & Noble and other companies and store them on underground server systems in the US, Latvia and the Ukraine. The DOJ(Department of Justice) has indicted 11 alleged hackers on charges of computer fraud, wire fraud, access device fraud, aggravated identity theft. So far only one of the 11 people charged by the DOJ has pleaded guilty.

3. Alcatel official pays $2.5 Million in bribes to Costa Rican Officials

Facing an increasingly competitive telecom market, former Alcatel official Christian Sapsizian decided to secure lucrative telecom contracts the old fashioned way: through bribes. Sapsizian, who worked as Alcatel's deputy vice president for the Latin American region from 2000 to 2004, was convicted in September of paying out $2.5 million in bribes to Costa Rican officials over a four-year period to help Alcatel nail down a $149 million cellular network deal. As punishment, Sapsizian, 62, will have to pay a $261,500 fine and serve three years of supervised release.

4. Thousands of company computers transformed to botnets

Robert Matthew Bentley needed a large network of computers to help him distribute adware. To this end, he hacked into the computer system at Newell Rubbermaid, the plastic-ware company that makes Sharpie markets, and transformed hundreds of its computers into a botnet(A botnet is a network of zombie computers under the remote control of a master). From there, the network was used to infect computers throughout the world with adware on behalf of DollarRevenue, a notorious adware producer that was fined over $1.5 million by the Dutch government for distributing adware in 2007. Bentley, a 21-year-old hacker based in Florida, was paid 0.15 Euros for each European computer he infected with adware and $0.25 for every US PC he infected with adware, investigators said. Bentley pleaded guilty to charges of computer fraud and conspiracy to commit computer fraud. He was sentenced to 41 months in prison and must pay $65,000 restitution.

5. Fraud with internet kiosks

Lillian Glaubman's business propositions were akin to the business plan of South Park's legendary Underpants Gnomes. In other words:

Step 1: Set up Internet kiosks

Step 2: ?????

Step 3: Profit!

This Miami woman was the administrator for Internet kiosk vendor Pantheon Holdings. According to investigators, Pantheon sold businesses Internet kiosks for $18,000 a pop by persuading them that they would reap substantial rewards from both Internet connection access and for advertisements that would appear on the kiosks. Additionally, Pantheon promised to find high-traffic areas for the kiosks and to get advertisers to place ads on the screens.

Predictably, Pantheon never did any work to attract advertisers and the kiosks were more likely to be placed in tumbleweed farms than in well-trafficked zones. In addition to serving jail time, Glaubman was also ordered to pay a whopping $18.2 million in restitution.

6. China made equipments sold as Cisco’s

It's a scam so simple: import a bunch of cheap no-name network equipment from China, pass it off as Cisco gear in the U.S. and walk away with a fortune. Charles Lacy-Thompson, the 52-year-old former owner of the New York-based Coletronic Computer electronics sales company, actually implemented such a scheme over a four-year period from 2003 through 2007. In that time, his company generated sales between $4 million and $5 million per year, and an FBI investigation found that Coletronic possessed more than 3,500 pieces of fake Cisco gear valued at $3.5 million. Despite the best efforts of Lacy-Thompson's lawyer to paint his client as a great guy - say, did you know he's an inspirational youth sports coach and that he volunteers at a local food pantry? - Lacy-Thompson was sentenced to 30 months in prison. He also has agreed to fork over $2.2 million in cash and property to the federal government.

7. Vice-President’s email hacked by a 20-year old lad

In addition to the big convictions for tech-related crime this year, there were several arrests in high-profile cases that are currently awaiting trial. The biggest was that of David Kernell (shown here), a 20-year-old Tennessee man who has been indicted for hacking into former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's email account. He has pleaded not guilty to accessing a protected computer. Other notable arrests include Francis Janosko, a former inmate at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts who was arrested by the FBI for allegedly hacking into his former prison's computer network and stealing prison workers' Social Security numbers; Viktor Savtyrev, a systems administrator from New Jersey who was arrested for allegedly trying to extort money from a company that had recently laid him off; and Biswamohan Pani, a former Intel employee who has been indicted for allegedly stealing $1 billion worth of trade secrets from his former company.