Banker of Syrian Electronic Army Deported to the US
A suspected hacker of SEA (Syrian Electronic Army), the hacking group supporting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has been deported from Germany to US.
As per Stars and Stripes, 36-year old Peter Romar is supposed to appear in an Eastern District of Virginia federal court on Tuesday, and then will face charges of conspiracy related to money laundering, extortion, wire fraud, violations of Syrian Sanctions and illegal interstate communications.
He is charged for Syrian Sanctions violations, conspiracy charges of hacking computers and extorting money, as well as other charges. Alarabiya.net posted on May 11th, 2016, quoting prosecutors as saying that he has joined the other hackers from pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army, who harass and sought to extort victims comprising of Human Rights Watch and Harvard University.
As per the US officials, Romar have worked with Dardar in an online extortion plan. Dardar get in touch with different US as well as international businesses, and then leverage his reputation as a member of the SEA would threaten the companies of carrying out the DDoS attacks, breaching companies' servers, and even disclosing data from the breached servers in case they did not pay a particular amount of money.
When the victim was a US company, then most probably, direct funds transfer would not be possible to a bank account in Syria because of US' Syrian Sanctions Regulations. Two more members of Syrian Electronic Army - Ahmad Umar Agha and Firas Dardar, who are known as "the Pro" and "the Shadow" respectively, too faces federal charges, although they are not caught yet.
In one of the case, SEA have breached a recruiting site of U.S. Marine Corps and encouraged the Marines to "refuse (their) orders".
FBI affidavit claims that the targeted entities in 2011 by Syrian Electronic Army includes Reuters, The Washington Post, Harvard University, the White House, National Public Radio, CNN, Human Rights Watch, The Associated Press, the Onion, the New York Post, Microsoft, USA Today, NASA and NBC Universal Inc..
The affidavit says that Romar would like to be a part of Syrian Electronic Army and thus contacted Agha, who introduced him to Dardar. As per the affidavit, Romar was very helpful in conspiracy as his German address makes it easier to collect extorted money from different hacked victims.
ยป SPAMfighter News - 5/16/2016
