Homeland Security News

This software giant may have crooks doing hard time.

Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit was behind an unprecedented takedown of servers powering some of the worst known cybercrime operations today, the Windows giant said late Sunday night. The “Zeus” family of malware is responsible for a large portion of online fraud and identity theft, the company said.

Office buildings in Illinois and Pennsylvania were raided by U.S. Marshals on Friday, March 23, accompanied by Microsoft investigators. Microsoft was supported by financial services security firms, including the Electronic Payments Association and the Financial Services -- Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

Computers at the site were infected by the Zeus malware, which uses a “keylogger” to records a person’s every computer keystroke, according to a legal complaint published online Saturday. The malware monitored online activity in order to gain access to usernames and passwords and steal victims’ identities, withdraw money from their bank accounts and make online purchases. 

Read more: FoxNews

Anonymous and other "hacktivist" groups rose to new prominence in the cybercrime universe last year, and a new report shows that they made some serious mischief.

Verizon's annual Data Breach Investigations Report, released Thursday, found that hacktivist groups were responsible for 58% of all data stolen last year. The telecom giant compiled data breach information from its customers and from law enforcement agencies in five countries.

The hacktivists' success is partially due to the sharp rise in the number of attacks Anonymous and its peers launched last year. Verizon, which has been tracking hacktivist activity since 2004, said that last year's collection of hacktivist breaches exceeded the total from all previous years combined.

That trend is "probably the biggest and single most important change" in this year's report, said Bryan Sartin, head of Verizon's data breach investigations team.

When online hacktivism first started in the 1990s, most of what the attackers accomplished were website defacements and denial of service attacks -- annoyances more than serious problems.

Read more: CNN