WebProNews

Indictments returned in massive digital theft case

Albert "Segvec" Gonzalez, a Miami resident, and ten other people have been charged with crimes associated with the breaches at nine retailers, including the epic penetration of TJX.

An indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in Boston accused Gonzalez and his co-defendants of obtaining credit and debit card numbers by "wardriving" and hacking into the wireless computer networks of major retailers, the Justice Department said in a statement.

DOJ named TJX, BJ’s Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21 and DSW as firms victimized by the ring. After breaching the networks, they installed "sniffer" programs to capture details like card numbers, passwords, and account information, as they moved through the retailers’ credit and debit processing networks.

Tracking down all of the conspirators may be difficult. DOJ said three of the defendants are US citizens, one is from Estonia, three are from Ukraine, two are from China and one is from Belarus. The last individual is unknown outside of an alias he used.

"You're more likely to get caught robbing a convenience store than you are robbing an online bank, and that's got to change," said Martin Carmichael, chief security officer for security vendor McAfee. "We need more tangible convictions to win the war against hacking."

The theft and sale of more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers led to Gonzalez, Christopher Scott, and Damon Patrick Toey being charged with conspiracy, computer intrusion, fraud and identity theft.