Department of Justice
FBI raids DPRK IT worker laptop farms in Texas, US nationals arrested
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has disrupted the Famous Chollima threat group’s operations by arresting two suspects, charging 14 individuals, and seizing nearly 187 laptops used in North Korean remote IT worker schemes. Famous Chollima (a.k.a. WageMole) is commonly tracked as a North Korean threat actor associated with fraudulent IT-worker schemes that generate revenue […]
US takes down NightmareStresser DDoS-for-hire platform
On Tuesday, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seized the domains used by NightmareStresser, one of the world’s longest-running distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) platforms. “Booter services” like NightmareStresser are DDoS-for-hire services that let anyone rent large botnets of compromised routers and a wide range of IoT devices to launch massive DDoS attacks targeting online platforms […]
TikTok reaches $400M settlement with US over COPPA violations
The U.S. Department of Justice announced a $400 million settlement with TikTok, ByteDance, and affiliated companies over allegations that they violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The TikTok social media platform, owned by the Chinese technology company ByteDance, allows users to create, watch, and share short-form videos. In 2024, the U.S. Department of […]
US charges Iranian hackers over $3.4 billion intellectual property theft
The U.S. has charged 17 Iranians, alleged members of a hacking-for-hire company called Mabna Institute, involved in years-long operations that stole data from American organizations. Nine of the defendants were previously charged in a March 2018 indictment for hacking more than 300 universities and private companies. The U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) has also announced rewards of up […]
DOJ seizes CFAKE, SOCFAKE deepfake nude sites under TAKE IT DOWN Act
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday that it has seized the CFAKE.com and SOCFAKE.com websites, which allegedly hosted nonconsensual AI-generated nude images and videos of women, in what appears to be the first publicly announced domain seizure under the TAKE IT DOWN Act. According to the DOJ, the sites shared sexually explicit digital images, […]
Ukrainian national pleads guilty to role in Conti ransomware operation
A Ukrainian national extradited from Ireland to the United States last year has pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges tied to the Conti ransomware operation. The U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday that 44-year-old Oleksii Oleksiyovych Lytvynenko pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in Conti ransomware attacks conducted between 2021 and […]
FBI seizes domain storing bank credentials stolen from U.S. victims
The U.S. government has seized the ‘web3adspanels.org’ domain and the associated database used by cybercriminals to host bank login credentials stolen in account takeover attacks. Cybercriminals collected the credentials in phishing campaigns targeting American citizens through fraudulent ads on Google and Bing search services that led to fake banking portals. The confirmed financial loss from […]
Five plead guilty to helping North Koreans infiltrate US firms
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that five individuals pleaded guilty to aiding North Korea’s illicit revenue generation schemes, including remote IT worker fraud and cryptocurrency theft. As part of this, the U.S. authorities announced actions seeking the forfeiture of $15 million in cryptocurrency from heists carried out by the APT38 threat group, which is […]
“Rapper Bot” malware seized, alleged developer identified and charged
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced charges against the alleged developer and administrator of the “Rapper Bot” DDoS-for-hire botnet. Ethan Foltz, 22, of Eugene, Oregon, allegedly rented the botnet to cybercriminals eho targeted various organizations. The botnet operation itself was seized as part of ‘Operation PowerOff ‘on August 6, during a raid at Foltz’s residence in Oregon. […]
U.S. Judiciary confirms breach of court electronic records service
The U.S. Federal Judiciary confirms that it suffered a cyberattack on its electronic case management systems hosting confidential court documents and is strengthening cybersecurity measures. The organization stated that, while most documents in the system are public, certain sealed filings contain sensitive information that is now protected with stricter access controls aimed at blocking hackers. […]