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Law enforcement officials in the UK have shut down an underground website that specialized in helping cybercriminals commit their crimes.  The site, called DarkMarket, was kept secret and access was granted by invitation only.  Its forum allowed cyberthieves to buy and sell stolen banking details and credit card numbers obtained via phishing scams and website hacks.  It also served as a learning tool, providing information on how to commit various online crimes.

The bust is the result of an undercover operation by the FBI. 60 arrests have been made (11 of them in the UK) as a result.  Authorities said the site had over 2,000 members.  These criminals made huge profits from the stolen credit and banking info.  Authorities said one man could have made over 10 million pounds (roughly $17 million US) with the info he bought.

“The people involved in this kind of activity have a certain arrogance—they think they are untouchable,“ said Sharon Lemon, SOCA(the UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency)‘s Deputy Director of E-Crime. “The message today is that no one should feel confident that these forums are a secure place to operate.“

It’s very likely that after a period of lying low, the site will rise again in another form.  However thanks to operations like this one, the criminals that use it will be constantly looking over their shoulders, knowing that it may only be a matter of time before the authorities come knocking again.

Read[Reuters]

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Infamous ISP Intercage (also known as Atrivo) has been knocked off line. Their upstream provider, Pacific Internet Exchange terminated their service. Intercage’s president, Emil Kacperski, blames Spamhaus. Spamhaus, an anti-spam organization that puts together a widely used blacklist, has been very critical of Intercage for years. It placed Pacific Internet Exchange on its blacklist on September 12th, and although a PIE spokeperson refused comment, it’s highly likely they cut off Intercage as a result,

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Sections: Communications, Email / IM, Web, Websites

BusinessWeek’s website has fallen under attack by hackers. Security vendor Sophos discovered the attack last week. Hundreds of pages of the popular site have been infected with malicious Javascript that redirects users to a Russian website that attempts to download malware to their computers. While some of the download attempts are being detected by malware blockers, many more are slipping through easily. The stats compiled by Google’s Safe Browsing API are alarming:

Of the 2157 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 214 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 09/15/2008, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 09/11/2008. Malicious software includes 721 scripting exploit(s), 4 trojan(s), 3 exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 2 new processes on the target machine.

Hijacking legit sites for malware attacks is nothing new. In the past USA Today, Facebook, MySpace, and others have been used by hackers for malware delivery. Experts estimate that at least 70% of all web based malware is hosted on legit sites. It is not yet known how many BusinessWeek.com visitors were caught in the attack and infected, and the site has had no comment.

Keep reading for safety tips on how you can avoid malware.

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Sections: Computers, Security, Web, Websites

Spam, phishing, identity theft, and online job scams are just some of the fastest growing types of crime today. Cybercrime is a growing business, netting millions for spammers, hackers, and malware authors, and a new study by the Center for American Progress says the US isn’t doing a thing about it. CAP, a think tank, surveyed all 50 states and discovered that 24 of them had online fraud among their top consumer complaints.

Malware, spyware, and phishing cost US consumers over $7 billion dollars last year. Yes, you read that right, $7 billion! Much of that comes from lost productivity, identity theft, and fraud such as the 419 or Nigeria scams. Despite this, the study didn’t find many prosecutions of online criminals.

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Sections: Computers, Security, Web, Websites

PCWorld is reporting that chinese hackers appear to be preparing for an attack on CNN scheduled for April 19. The attack is being spurred by the recent pro-Tibet coverage in the media. A Chinese site called Anti-CNN is protesting what it considers anti-Chinese propaganda and is calling for protests in several countries including Germany, France and the UK. The hackers, believed to be members of The Red Hat Alliance, are calling for a DDos (Distributed Denial of Service Attack) against CNN to coincide with the protests. It is not yet known if the group is capable of backing up its attack threats, but security firms and media outlets will be watching closely to find out.

Read [PCWorld]

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Sections: Computers, Security, Web, Websites