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Darkode hacker pleads guilty to spreading Facebook malware
One of the 12 people charged when the Darkode cybercrime forum was seized has pled guilty and will be sentenced on November 23rd. According to Reuters, Eric Crocker aka Phastman from Binghamton, New York, has admitted that he and other hackers from the forum broke into at least 77,000 computers. They apparently used a tool called "Facebook Spreader" to infect machines. Reuters didn't explain how it works in detail, but in this one example posted on Reddit, the malware spreads because infected people's accounts are programmed to send all their friends a file to download. That file runs as soon as you click it.
Darkode cybercrime forum seized as police arrest 28 members
In a coordinated takedown, law enforcement agents around the world have teamed up to shut down the well-known cybercrime forum Darkode, pursuing 70 of its members and associates resulting in 28 arrests so far. In the US, the Department of Justice and the FBI have announced criminal charges against 12 individuals including the site's alleged admin, Johan Anders Gudmunds, aka Mafi aka Crim aka Synthet!c, and the seizure of the site's servers. Dubbed Operation Shrouded Horizon, the effort by police in 20 countries took on a forum known as a place for cyber criminals to swap tips and tools (botnets, spamming services, you name it) of the trade. Brian Krebs has been reporting on Darkode's community for quite some time, including a profile published after its administrators tricked him into publishing details on a fake Java exploit.
