Teenage Hacker ‘Cosmo the God’ sentenced to six years – WITH NO INTERNET

“Cosmo the God” in a park near his home in Long Beach, California.

A 15-year-old hacker convicted of multiple felonies was handed an unusual sentence by a Long Beach, California juvenile court on Wednesday, one that will see him all but banned from the internet until his twenty-first birthday.

The hacker's real name was not disclosed because he is a minor, but according to a report, he goes by the handles "Cosmo" or "Cosmo the God."

As a member of the notorious UG Nazi hacker collective, Cosmo participated in an online reign of terror involving many of the year's most significant hacking events, including a DDoS attack that brought down Twitter for several hours.

Cosmo was finally nabbed in June, following a coordinated law enforcement action that also led to 23 other arrests, spread across eight US states and 13 countries. He was eventually arraigned on a laundry list of charges, ranging from credit card fraud, to identity theft and online impersonation, to making bomb threats.

Had he stood trial and been convicted, he faced a sentence of three years in prison. Instead, he pleaded guilty to all of the charges against him, in exchange for a six-year probation that will allow him to avoid incarceration – for a price.

Under the terms of his plea bargain agreement, Cosmo cannot use the internet without the prior consent of his parole officer, for the duration of his probation. Even then, he cannot go online "in an unsupervised manner," and he cannot use the internet for anything but education-related purposes.

Furthermore, he must turn over the usernames and passwords for all of his online accounts, and if he has access to any devices that are capable of connecting to a network, he must identify them to the court in writing. The devices the court already knows about – the ones that were seized in the FBI raid on his home – won't be returned.

Finally, Cosmo is to have no contact with any members of UG Nazi or Anonymous, nor their associates, nor a list of "other individuals," as specified by the court.

Violate any of those terms, and he goes straight to the slammer for the full three-year bid.

Author: dfgdfg,

Categories: Anonymous, Cosmos the God, Cyber Crime, Hacking, Ug Nazi

Hacker Arrested for 2008 DDoS Attacks on Amazon.com

A 25-year-old Russian hacker has been arrested for allegedly orchestrating two DDoS (Denial-of-Service) attacks on Amazon.com and eBay in 2008.

"Cyber bandit" Dmitry Olegovich Zubakha was indicted in 2011, but he was just arrested in Cyprus on Wednesday. Zubakha was arrested on an international warrant and is currently in custody pending extradition to the United States.

According to the indictment, which was unsealed on Thursday, Zubakha, with the help of another Russian hacker, planned and executed DDoS attacks against Amazon.com, eBay, and Priceline in June 2008. Zubakha and his co-conspirator launched the attack by programming botnet computers to request "large and resource intensive web pages." According to a press release by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the attacks made it "difficult for Amazon customers to complete their business on line."

Zubakha and his friend claimed credit for the attacks on online hacker forums, and law enforcement traced 28,000 stolen credit card numbers to the pair in 2009. For that reason, Zubakha and his partner are also charged with aggravated identity theft for illegally using the credit card of at least one person.

"These cyber bandits do serious harm to our businesses and their customers," said U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan in a statement. "But the old adage is true: the arm of the law is long. This defendant could not hide in cyberspace, and I congratulate the international law enforcement agencies who tracked him down and made this arrest."

At present, the charges in the indictment -- conspiracy, intentionally causing damage toa protected computer resulting in a loss of more than $5000, possession of more than 15 unauthorized access devices (credit card numbers), and aggravated identity theft -- are just allegations. Zubakha faces up to five years in prison for conspiracy, up to teh years in prison and a $250,000 fine for intentionally causing damage to a protected computer, up to ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine for possessing unauthorized access devices, and an additional two years in prison (on top of any other sentence) for aggravated identity theft.

Author: dfgdfg,

Categories: Amazon, Cyber Crime, Hackers

DefCon: The World’s Largest Hackers Conference

Hackers compete in a digital capture the flag game at the DefCon conference

There are so many ways to get hacked at the world’s largest hacker conference.

A hacker could bump against your pocket with a card reader that steals your credit card information. Or a hacker might eavesdrop on your Internet traffic through an unsecured Wi-Fi network. Or a hacker might compromise your cell phone while you charge it in the hotel’s public phone-charging kiosk.

The Internet connection here has been dubbed "the world’s most hostile network." You might want to avoid the A.T.M.'s, too.

Welcome to DefCon, where thousands of the world's best code crackers gather each year to discuss the latest hacking techniques -- then occasionally try them out on each other.

More than 10,000 hackers and security experts have descended upon the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas this weekend for three days of lectures and contests.

Admission to DefCon, now in its 19th year, is $150, far less than Black Hat, a cybersecurity conference held earlier this week at nearby Caesar’s Palace that cost around $1,500.

At both conferences, hackers can make a name for themselves by demonstrating how they found security flaws in technology that most observers would consider well-protected or harmless.

At DefCon this year, there are presentations on how to hack office printers, wireless water meters, smart phones, laptop batteries and the network used at correctional facilities to open and close prison doors.

For the paranoid, there is a presentation on how to destroy data if you're "convinced that the black helicopters are incoming and ruthless feds are determined to steal your plans for world domination," according to the conference program.

The conference also offers more than 50 games and contests to challenge hackers. In one room, techno music thumps over loud speakers as teams of hackers hunched over laptops try to steal files from each other in a game called "Capture the Flag."

Another game gives contestants five minutes to hack into a voting machine. Yet another contest, called "Crack Me If You Can," challenges teams to crack as many passwords as possible in 48 hours; the winner gets $600.

Some DefCon attendees complained Friday on Twitter that A.T.M.'s inside the convention hotel were out of service. To some, this was no surprise. After all, hacker Barnaby Jack demonstrated at Black Hat last year how to hack into an A.T.M. Two years ago, a malicious A.T.M. was placed at DefCon and stole data from conference attendees before it was detected.

Some companies see the hacker conference as a place to scout for new talent. In June, Facebook hired George Hotz, the young hacker who gained notoriety in 2007 for "jailbreaking" Apple's iPhone, getting around the phone's software controls.

Companies exposed for weak security are not the only ones being embarrassed at DefCon. If a conference attendee logs on to her email account, for example, using an unsecured wireless network, her username and password are posted on an electronic board known as the "Wall of Sheep."

Brian Markus, chief executive of Aries Security, said his company runs the "Wall of Sheep" to teach a lesson on Internet security. He compared using unsecured networks to the free-love ethic of the 1960s and 1970s when many people had unprotected sex.

"Today, everybody is connected and they need to go out and get protection because the environment has changed," Markus said.

Most DefCon attendees are particularly cautious about security, going so far as to use only their online nicknames at the conference. Many attendees are young, wear dark clothes and sport a wide range of hairstyles -- including mohawks -- with enough hair colors represented to match a Crayola box.

Not everyone here is a hacker, though. Employees of federal agencies also attend, giving panel discussions and inspiring a traditional game among hackers at DefCon called “Spot the Fed.”

Friday's program included a beer-chilling contest, where contestants competed to cool beer that had been sitting in the hot desert sun. Two participants, Chris McMinn and Chris Lopez, built an 11-foot-long contraption from aluminum and steel pipes that they said cools beer from 90 degrees to 40 degrees in four seconds.

They did not win the contest, but they didn't seem to care.

"We did it more for the glory," Lopez said. "All of our science teachers would be very proud."

McMinn added: "Where else would you chill beer for sport?"

Author: dfgdfg,

Categories: Black Hat Conference, Cyber Crime, Cyber Security, Defcon 19, Hackers, Hacking