Federal prosecutors have cracked the largest hacking and identity theft ring ever. Officials charged 11 people with stealing more than 41 million credit and debit card numbers from national retailers including T.J. Maxx, Barnes & Noble, and BJ's Wholesale Club.
The New York Times reported that three of the defendants are United States citizens, one is from Estonia, three are from Ukraine, two are from China, and one is from Belarus. The name and whereabouts of the final defendant are unknown.
According to federal officials, a principal organizer of the ring was Albert Gonzalez, a man from Miami who was indicted by a federal grand jury in Boston on charges of computer fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy, among other charges. If convicted on all counts, he could face life in prison.
The ring was sophisticated, organized, and technologically savvy. The Times said Gonzalez and his associates drove around and scanned the wireless networks of retailers to find security holes in the networks, known as "war driving," according to prosecutors. When the thieves identified technical weaknesses, they installed so-called sniffer programs, which they obtained from overseas accomplices.
Those programs infiltrated retailers' networks for processing credit cards and intercepted customers' personal identification numbers and debit and credit numbers that were stored there. The thieves then transferred that data to computers in the United States, Latvia, and Ukraine, The Times reported.
Officials say the conspirators sold credit card numbers online and imprinted other stolen numbers on the magnetic stripes of blank cards so that they could withdraw thousands of dollars from ATMs.
Source: Information Management Journal
