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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday July 16 2015, @12:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-g-men-are-a'comin dept.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has shut down a "major computer hacking forum" called Darkode. The Darkode site now displays a banner with a message from the FBI, Department of Justice, and many foreign police agencies.

U.S. authorities working with law enforcement partners abroad have shut down the Darkode online forum used by cybercriminals around the world and charged 12 people linked to the site, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.

U.S. Attorney David Hickton announced the charges in Pittsburgh and called Darkode "a cyber hornet's nest of criminal hackers."

"Of the roughly 800 criminal Internet forums worldwide, Darkode represented one of the gravest threats to the integrity of data on computers in the United States," he said.

The Justice Department said the FBI and U.S. attorney's office in Pittsburgh led the investigation, known as Operation Shrouded Horizon. It included authorities from Europol and 20 countries in Europe and Latin America and included Israel, Nigeria and Australia.

12 individuals have been charged:

  • Johan Anders Gudmunds, aka Mafi aka Crim aka Synthet!c, 27, of Sollebrunn, Sweden.
  • Morgan C. Culbertson, aka Android, 20, of Pittsburgh.
  • Eric L. Crocker, aka Phastman, 39, of Binghamton, New York.
  • Naveed Ahmed, aka Nav aka semaph0re, 27, of Tampa, Florida.
  • Phillip R. Fleitz, aka Strife, 31, of Indianapolis.
  • Dewayne Watts, aka m3t4lh34d aka metal, 28, of Hernando, Florida.
  • Murtaza Saifuddin, aka rzor, 29, of Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan.
  • Daniel Placek, aka Nocen aka Loki aka Juggernaut aka M1rr0r, 27, of Glendale, Wisconsin.
  • Matjaz Skorjanc, aka iserdo aka serdo, 28, of Maribor, Slovenia.
  • Florencio Carro Ruiz, aka NeTK aka Netkairo, 36, of Vizcaya, Spain.
  • Mentor Leniqi, aka Iceman, 34, of Gurisnica, Slovenia.
  • Rory Stephen Guidry, aka k@exploit.im, of Opelousas, Louisiana.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @02:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @02:06PM (#209935)

    After all it can easily be argued that Heartbleed and Shellshock cost the world more money due to break ins and lost time fixing it than every bug both Windows and OSX has had in the last 5 years combined

    Why limit it to the last 5 years? What about other bugs on a similar scale? And I've seen no scientific data about this. Care to cite a study?

    I don't think that you should be in prison merely for making mistakes while writing software, however. Not very much software would be written if it had to be up to NASA standards and you were held personally liable for every exploit.

    Before you defend guys like this I would strongly suggest you read a little article on Wikileaks, I believe the full title is "Confessions of a child pornographer" but I'm sure if you just type child pornographer into Wikileaks you'll find it. In that article a truly sick evil douchebag that makes insane amounts of money selling kiddie porn talks at length about his trade, including how he often buys the services of "hackers" like these to play a "fun little game" where he picks some random visitor to one of his non CP sites and uses an exploit bought from guys like this to drop a folder of CP on the victim's PC and then create links on trading sites frequented by LEOs. He thinks that is quite funny and I have zero doubt the black hats that sell to him don't know exactly what he does as he is quite proud of his line of "work" and thinks his game is a right laugh.

    Interesting. In addition to showing guys like this are awful, it shows that our laws about CP possession are insane. You're guilty unless proven innocent to the Protect The Children At All Costs crowd.