Underground Espionage Syndicate Shut Down
Underground hacking groups do exist that are paid to steal your personal data. These groups can target anyone. The high profile case of Michael Haephrati gave us a look into this secret hackers world.
Mr. Haephrati, a computer programmer, created a Trojan to spy on his former in-laws. His wife saw the money in selling this capability to other people.
Haephratis subscribers could target any individual or business they wanted to steal intellectual property from. The data stolen was secret correspondence, economic data, and documents.
This is the creepy story of how they did it.
Haephrati subscribers would pick a target they wanted to steal information from. Haephrati would then deliver a psychological hook to that individual. The target received an email from a person that looked like a known associate. The psychological hook was usually of a business opportunity. When the target responded to the email, they would receive a Trojan. If the target did not respond to the original email, they would receive a CD by postal mail with the psychological hook and a hidden Trojan.
The Trojan was part key-logger, part remote access exploit, and part copy and send FTP software. The key-logger portion would record keystrokes. The remote access exploit allowed anyone to watch what a person was doing on their computer in real time. The FTP portion of the Trojan would scan, copy, and send files to more than a dozen servers located around the world.
According to police records, the data stolen included secret marketing plans, data on new products in the making, and even confidential employee data. Police estimate that some 13 gigs of data was stolen from people before they were able to shut it down.
People who subscribed to Haephrati gained economic advantage of competitors.
A subscription to Haephratis didn’t come cheap. Haephratis charged a business customer $3,500 (U.S. dollars) to create a customized software program and to make the initial install on the victim’s computer. The monthly fee was then $900 to maintain the infrastructure used to collect, store, and forward the secretly acquired data on a monthly basis.
The cost to victims of Haephrati’s were huge. They lost their best marketing plans, new secret products in the pipe-line they were working on, and even lost the trust of their employees’ because of stolen employees’ personal data. All of this theft was facilitated by what are known as underground servers. The following price list was found on underground servers in 2007.
Phishing Web site hosting”per site $4 - $6 Yahoo Mail cookie exploit”advertised to facilitate full access when successful $4 U.S.-based credit card with card verification value $2 - $7 An identity (including U.S. bank account, credit card, date of birth, and government-issued identification number) $15 - $19 List of 28,000 e-mails $6 UK-based credit card with card verification value $3 - $13 Skype accounts $13 Online banking account with a $9,500 balance $400 Valid Yahoo and Hotmail e-mail cookies $4 Compromised computers $7 - $21 World of Warcraft accounts”one month duration $11 Verified PayPal account with balance (balance varies) $11 - $60 Unverified PayPal account with balance (balance varies) $13
Haephrati may have never been caught if it wasn’t for his own stupidity. He continued to harass his former in-laws by taking his former father-in-law’s private work and posting it publicly on the Internet to defame his person and character. His former father-in-law went to the police in November of 2004.
The police were able to trace the Trojan back to Haephrati’s business by using their own anti-hacker computer forensic tools.
In 2005, Michael Haephrati and his wife were arrested by British police in London and extradited to Israeli where they were found guilty of economic and industrial espionage.
Rumor has it that a secret deal was reached between Haephrati and the Israel Intelligence Agency and they were set free. The deal involves Haephrati now using his Trojan software for law enforcement agencies.
By Michael Scott. To learn more about how to protect your family by doing a background check on anyone go to spy gear
Related posts:
- Trojan-Downloader Zlob Removal: The Best Ways to Completely Remove the Zlob Trojan Virus! Win32 TrojanDownloader.Zlob, a common strand of the Zlob Trojan Virus,...
- What Is The Zlob Trojan And What Does It Do? What you need to know about the Zlob Trojan comes...
- Business Card In Miami Lakes FL: Fast And Stylish One of the things that you have to pay attention...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.