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Russian Hackers Shared Roots with Turkish Gang

Three hackers based in Russia sent out viruses to one million e-mail inboxes to steal information relating to their bank accounts. The hackers belong to an Internet fraud gang in Izmir. Police raided homes and held 17 members of the gang.

Police said the gang had already collected dollars in hundreds of thousands by recording details of the bank accounts of nearly thousand people, SABAH reports.

The Izmir Organized Crime Bureau noted that numerous people had reported to Izmir Prosecutors Office close to one month past complaining that unknown sources had removed money from their accounts.

Armed with the Prosecutors Office's orders, Izmir Organized Crime Bureau started with an investigation into the case. Police determined that online thieves gained access to actual passwords and used them to withdraw money out of the accounts of those people.

Kubilay Gungur, Director of IT Crimes Group arranged a team of 20 officers who were able to detect the identity of the gang members. After a search for one and a half month, police detected the IP numbers of the PCs involved in the fraudulent operation.

On February 13, 2007, police raided on various addresses in Izmir, Fethiye, Didim and Kusadasi from where they captured 17 members of the gang. The fraud was one of the biggest IT crime operations in Turkey. It also revealed that the gang was associated with some Russian hackers.

These three hackers seized account information of people who had Internet accounts in Turkey. The hackers victimized them by sending e-mails carrying virus. The hackers then transmitted the information to the organization in Turkey and took out U.S. $330,000 from the bank accounts of nearly 1,000 individuals.

The investigators found that the organization sent 10% of the accumulated money to the hackers as commission. It remitted U.S. $33,000 to these fraudsters during the past two weeks. The investigating team immediately gave the Russian hackers' names to Interpol.

The hacking attacks are growing at a dramatic rate. Prevention from this crime would continue chiefly with the use of firewall and anti-virus software along with vigilant users until overwhelming forms of security replace them.

Related article: Russian Hackers Break into NOAA to Push Pills

» SPAMfighter News - 2/23/2007

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