Largest Network of Crackers Busted in Canada

The local police of Quebec asserted that they've busted a gang of cyber-criminals who hacked into unsecured Personal Computers (PCs) worldwide.

As per the official sources, the provincial police searched a number of houses in Quebec on February 20, 2008 and nabbed 16 persons. After investigating them, the police claimed that it has busted the biggest hacking scam in the history of Canada.

Explaining the technique of the cyber-criminals at a news conference in Montreal on February 20, 2008, Captain Frederick Gaudreau of the Provincial Police said that the crackers work together over the net to hack and attack nearly a million PCs worldwide that lack efficient antivirus patch or firewalls, as reported by CBCNEWS on February 20, 2008.

The Captain also said that by using these alleged malevolent code, inadequately secured PCs can be forcibly taken over and transform into zombies, even when the users amaze over why the speed of their Internet connection has reduced drastically, as reported by NATIONAL POST on February 20, 2008.

Moreover, he also told the media that almost all the PCs hacked by the gang of crackers were centered in Brazil and Poland. However, a few computers in Manitoba and the US were attacked as well.

Capt. Gaudreau suspected that the cyber-terrorists employed these hacking methods to perpetrate identity theft, various types of information theft, junk-mail attack, and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. The police force also removed and took into custody large numbers of disk drives and other computer hardware from the houses of all the offenders.

Rough assessments made by the authorities put the harm caused by these attacks to government, industries and persons at approximately $45 Million. As per figures given by Capt. Gaudrea, everyone of the suspected cyber-terrorists arrested on February 20, 2008 stealthily controlled around 5,000 PCs, as reported by NATIONAL POST on February 20, 2008.

In the meantime, seven of those nabbed on February 20, 2008 have been accused of unlawfully securing computer services, a crime that holds a punishment of up to 10 years imprisonment. Although other suspects were freed after interrogation and haven't been indicted as yet, they might be accused later on, stated police sources.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/28/2008