Hackers have stolen the source code for Electronic Arts (EA) games including and dark darknet market url tools like the ‘Frostbite’ engine that powers titles such as the ‘Battlefield’ series.
The California-based video game company acknowledged the cybercrime on Thursday June 10,
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EA also said that it was ‘actively working with law enforcement officials and other experts as part of [an] ongoing criminal investigation.’
According to Vice, hackers have been boasting online about the attack via underground internet forums, with one post saying they ‘have full capability of exploiting on all EA services.’
Furthermore, they reported, dark market 2023 the hackers have been advertising the stolen software for sale across various dark market onion web forums.
A spokesperson for EA has said that the attackers did not access any private player data and that the breach is unlikely to affect their business operations.Pictured: a screenshot from EA’s upcoming ‘Battlefield 2042’ game, powered by the Frostbite engine whose code was stolen
‘Anytime source code gets leaked, it’s not good,’ said cloud security architect Stuart Green of Isreal-based Check Point Software.
‘With such precious information in their hands, dark web markets hackers can easily see the inner workings of a game, exploit security gaps and even reverse-engineer games for malicious purposes,’ he continued.
‘These malicious activities can scale if hackers proceed to sell their theft.’
‘Reports are out that the source code in the EA Games data leak is already being advertised on the darknet market, which is not surprising as hackers are usually quick to monetise what they steal.’
‘Selling such proprietary information, like source code from EA Games, can net someone big money on the darknet market.’
Among the files stolen was part of the source code for the Frostbite game engine which powers many EA titles, including the ‘Battlefield’ series.Pictured: Game enthusiasts and industry personnel watch scenes from ‘Battlefield One’ during the Electronic Arts EA Play event on June 10, 2017 in Los Angeles, California
The news follows a wave of high-profile cyberattacks in recent months.
These have included several ransomware attacks on industrial firms and darknet market list health care facilities — as well as and breaches of government and non-profit networks which experts have attributed to espionage efforts.
The attack on EA comes as major video game makers are on the brink of participating in the annual , which is running from June 12-15 this year and is being held virtually due to the pandemic.
La entrada Cybercrooks steal code for Electronic Arts games including FIFA 21 se publicó primero en JugoTerapia.]]>
At least, that’s what a . Why? Because 36.4% of the 1.66 million computers survey had LimeWire, a popular peer-to-peer (P2P) program installed. Guilty by association?
I have LimeWire installed on my Mac. This doesn’t make me a thief. In fact, I’ve bought a wide range of music through iTunes over the past year. I think I’ve downloaded one or two songs and a few goal compilations using LimeWire in the past year when I couldn’t find them on iTunes. The songs in question – by Led Zeppelin – I ended up buying (again, as I’d already bought them once or twice on CD and dark darknet market link cassette tape) when they became available on iTunes.
So, 99.999% of the music I’ve listened to in the past year was happily bought through legitimate means. .001% was not. At least, not originally. Am I a thief? I suppose so. But not by any devious plan. I imagine that I’m not alone in how I consume music.
But maybe as a 30-something geezer, I’m atypical. Maybe everyone does want to steal music, as the music industry seems to believe. If this is the case, , charging more per song does not sound like a winning resolution to the problem:
Clearly, the so-called «darknet market» remains far and away the world’s leading provider of online media content, drowning legit download services in a flood of «free.» This data also should give the major labels pause in their ongoing attempts to convince Apple that $0.99 per song is way too cheap.
The music industry . It resisted the digital urge for so long that it helped to push people to steal rather than purchase music. I think it’s in an intermediate quandary, but one that will fade as more and more people get used to the idea for dark market url buying digital music, whether through iTunes (or other online markets), ringtones, darknet market websites or other means.
The music industry can take solace in the discovery that certain demographics are more likely to buy music than others: , for one, but also older users. , but once they graduate…more disposable income and more propensity to pay for value.
In sum, darkmarket url the music industry can use Simon and Garfunkel to subsidize Britney Spears. Take heart: thieves eventually grow up to become corporate drones with cash to burn and the inclination to do so in legitimate ways.
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This is part of our about how innovators are thinking up new ways to make you — and the world around you — smarter.
«Are you a hacker?»
A Las Vegas driver asks me this after I tell him I’m headed to Defcon at Caesars Palace. I wonder if his sweat isn’t just from the 110℉ heat blasting the city.
All week, a cloud of paranoia looms over Las Vegas, as hackers from around the world swarm Sin City for Black Hat and Defcon, two back-to-back cybersecurity conferences taking place in the last week of July. At Caesars Palace, where Defcon is celebrating its 25th anniversary, the UPS store posts a sign telling guests it won’t accept printing requests from USB thumb drives. You can’t be too careful with all those hackers in town.
Aaron Robinson/CNET
Everywhere I walk I see hackers — in tin-foiled fedoras, wearing . Mike Spicer, a security researcher, carries a 4-foot-high backpack holding a «Wi-Fi cactus.» Think wires, antennas, colored lights and 25 Wi-Fi scanners that, in seven hours, captured 75 gigabytes of data from anyone foolish enough to use public Wi-Fi. I see a woman thank him for holding the door open for her, all while his backpack sniffs for unencrypted passwords and personal information it can grab literally out of thin air.
You’d think that, with all the potential threats literally walking about town, Vegas’ director of technology and innovation, Mike Sherwood, would be stressed out. It’s his job to protect thousands of smart sensors around the city that could jam traffic, blast water through pipes or cause a blackout if anything goes haywire.
And yet he’s sitting right in front of me at Black Hat, smiling.
His entire three-person team, in fact, is at Black Hat so they can learn how to stave off future attacks. Machine learning is guarding Las Vegas’ network for them.
Broadly speaking, artificial intelligence refers to machines carrying out jobs that we would consider smart. Machine learning is a subset of AI in which computers learn and adapt for themselves.
Now a number of cybersecurity companies are turning to machine learning in an attempt to stay one step ahead of professionals working to steal industrial secrets, disrupt national infrastructures, hold computer networks for ransom and even influence elections. Las Vegas, which relies on machine learning to keep the bad guys out, offers a glimpse into a future when more of us will turn to our AI overlords for protection.
Even so, that has protected Las Vegas’ network and thousands of sensors for the last 18 months.
Since last February, Darktrace has defended the city from cyberattacks, around the clock. That comes in handy when you have only three staffers handling cybersecurity for people, 3,000 employees and thousands of online devices. It was worse when Sherwood joined two years ago.
«That was the time where we only had one security person on the team,» Sherwood tells me. «That was when I thought, ‘I need help and I can’t afford to hire more people.'»
He’d already used Darktrace in his previous job as deputy director of public safety and city technology in Irvine, California, and he thought the software could help in Las Vegas. Within two weeks, Darktrace found malware on Las Vegas’ network that was sending out data.
«We didn’t even know,» Sherwood says. «Traditional scanners weren’t picking it up.»
Pattern recognition
I’m standing in front of a tattoo parlor in , a little more than 4 miles from Caesars Palace. Across the street, I see three shuttered stores next to two bail bonds shops.
I’m convinced the taxi driver dropped me off at the wrong location.
This is supposed to be Vegas’ $1 million Innovation District project? Where are the in the area? Or the ?
I look again at the Innovation District map on my phone. I’m in the right place. Despite the rundown stores, darkmarket url trailer homes and empty lots, this corner of downtown Vegas is much smarter than it looks.
That’s because hidden on the roads and inside all the streetlights, traffic signals and pipes are thousands of sensors. They’re tracking the air quality, controlling the lights and water, counting the cars traveling along the roads, and providing Wi-Fi.
Aaron Robinson/CNET
Officials chose the city’s rundown area to serve as its Innovation District because they wanted to redevelop it, with help from technology, Sherwood says. There’s just one problem: All those connected devices are potential targets for a cyberattack. That’s where Darktrace comes in.
Sherwood willingly banks on Darktrace to protect the city’s entire network because the software comes at machine learning from a different angle. Most machine learning tools rely on brute force: cramming themselves with thousands of terabytes of data so they can learn through plenty of trial and error. That’s how IBM’s Deep Blue computer learned to defeat Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion, in a best-of-seven match in 1997. In the security world, that data describes malware signatures — essentially algorithms that identify specific viruses or worms, for instance.
Darktrace, in contrast, doesn’t look at a massive database of malware that’s come before. Instead, it looks for darkmarket url patterns of human behavior. It learns within a week what’s considered normal behavior for users and sets off alarms when things fall out of pattern, like when someone’s computer suddenly starts encrypting loads of files.
Rise of the machines?
Still, it’s probably too soon to hand over all security responsibilities to artificial intelligence, says , a security professor and director of Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab Security and Privacy Institute. He predicts it’ll take at least 10 years before we can safely use AI to keep bad things out.
«It’s really easy for AI to miss things,» Brumley tells me over the phone. «It’s not a perfect solution, and you still need people to make important choices.»
Aaron Robinson/CNET
Brumley’s team last year built an AI machine that won beating out other AI entries. A few days later, their contender took on some of the world’s best hackers at Defcon. They came in last.
Sure, machines can help humans fight the scale and speed of attacks, but it’ll take years before they can actually call the shots, says Brumley.
That’s because the model for AI right now is still data cramming, which — by today’s standards — is actually kind of dumb.
But it was still good enough to , making him the de facto poster child for man outsmarted by machine.
«I always remind people it was a rematch, because I won the first one,» he tells me, chuckling, while sitting in a room at Caesars Palace during Defcon. Today Kasparov, 54, is the which is why he’s been giving talks around the country on why humans need to work with AI in cybersecurity.
He tells me machines can now learn too fast for humans to keep up, no matter if it’s chess or cybersecurity. «The vigilance and the precision required to beat the machine — it’s virtually impossible to reach in human competition,» Kasparov says.
Nobody’s perfect
About two months before Defcon, I’m at Darktrace’s headquarters in New York, where company executives show me how the system works.
On a screen, I see connected computers and printers sending data to Darktrace’s network as it monitors for behavior that’s out of the ordinary.
Garry Kasparov addresses the Defcon crowd at this year’s conference.
Avast
«For example, Sue doesn’t usually access this much internal data,» Nancy Karches, Darktrace’s sales manager, tells me. «This is straying from Sue’s normal pattern.» So Darktrace shuts down an attack most likely waged by another machine.
«When you have machine-based attacks, the attacks are moving at a machine speed from one to the other,» says Darktrace CEO Nicole Eagan. «It’s hard for humans to keep up with that.»
But what happens when AI becomes the norm? When everyone’s using AI, says Brumley, hackers will turn all their attention on finding the machines’ flaws — something they’re not doing yet.
Darktrace
«We’ve seen again and again, the reason new solutions work better is because attackers aren’t targeting its weaknesses,» he says. «As soon as it became popular, it started working worse and worse.»
About 60 percent of cybersecurity experts at Black Hat believe hackers will use AI for attacks by 2018, according to a survey from the security company Cylance.
«Machine learning security is not foolproof,» says Hyrum Anderson, principal data scientist at cybersecurity company Endgame, darknet markets who and their tools. Anderson expects AI-based malware will rapidly make thousands of attempts to find code that the AI-based security misses.
to see more Road Trip adventures.
Bettmann/Contributor
«The bad guy can do this with trial and error, and it will cost him months,» Anderson says. «The bot can learn to do this, and it will take hours.»
Anderson says he expects cybercriminals will eventually sell AI malware on darknet market links markets to wannabe hackers.
For now, darknet markets 2023 Sherwood feels safe having the city protected by an AI machine, darknet market links which has shielded Las Vegas’ network for the past year. But he also realizes a day will come when hackers could outsmart the AI. That’s why Sherwood and his Las Vegas security team are at Black Hat: to learn how to use human judgment and creativity while the machine parries attacks as rapidly as they come in.
Kasparov has been trying to make that point for the last 20 years. He sees machines doing about 80 percent to 90 percent of the work, but he believes they’ll never get to what he calls «that last decimal place.»
«You will see more and more advanced destruction on one side, and that will force you to become more creative on the positive side,» he tells me.
«Human creativity is how we make the difference.»
: Reporters’ dispatches from the field on tech’s role in the global refugee crisis.
: CNET hunts for innovation outside the Silicon Valley bubble.
Eric Eoin Marques is entitled to withdraw his guilty plea from last year if the judge departs from the sentencing range prosecutors and defense attorneys recommended.
But U.S.District Judge Theodore Chuang isn’t bound by the terms of the Justice Department´s plea deal.
«It’s too flawed, and I also don’t agree with the outcome,» Chuang said.
The judge said he’s inclined to give Marques a longer sentence for operating a dark web market list hosting service that enabled users to anonymously access millions of illicit images and videos, many depicting the rape and torture of infants and toddlers.
The judge criticized a provision of the plea deal that wouldn’t give Marques credit for six years he spent in custody in Ireland while fighting extradition after his 2013 arrest in Dublin. Chuang said he can’t tell the federal Bureau of Prisons to refrain from counting those years when Marques likely is entitled to get credit for dark darknet market url that time.
The judge said he isn’t prepared to impose a sentence of 15 to 21 years if Marques does get credit for those six years.
«I want a sentence higher than that,» Chuang added.»It’s not going to be 21 minus 6 to 15. That’s not going to happen. I don’t have to follow what you all did. It’s clear neither of you really understood what you were doing.»
Chuang also expressed frustration that prosecutors and defense lawyers still couldn’t agree on certain facts of the case even after spelling them out in writing as part of the deal.
«I certainly think the process was such that I shouldn’t defer to the parties’ agreement when I’m not sure they really thought it out that carefully,» he said.
Defense attorney Brendan Hurson told the judge that his remarks give them a «platform to negotiate further.»
«If we can’t get somewhere, then we would ask for some time to set a trial date,» Hurson said.
Chuang instructed the attorneys to provide him with a status report by June 25.
Marques, a 35-year-old dual citizen of the U.S.and Ireland, was extradited to Maryland in March 2019, and pleaded guilty in February 2020 to conspiracy to advertise child pornography. He faced a mandatory minimum of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years in prison before the plea deal.
Marques created and operated a free, anonymous web hosting service, called «Freedom Hosting,» on the darknet market between 2008 and 2013.The darknet market is part of the internet but hosted within an encrypted network. It is accessible only through anonymity-providing tools, such as the Tor browser, and allows users to access websites without revealing their IP addresses.
Marques´ attorneys have questioned how federal investigators were able to pierce the Tor network´s anonymity and darkmarket 2023 trace the IP address of the server to a web hosting company in Roubaix, France.»This anonymity is notoriously difficult for government investigators to penetrate,» they wrote.
Defense attorneys said they received an initial answer to that question when the government revealed «vague details» of how they discovered the IP address and location of the server.»It appears that this disclosure was delayed, in part, because the investigative techniques employed were, until recently, classified,» they wrote in December 2019.
Investigators found what appeared to be more than 8.5 million images and videos of child pornography on the Freedom Hosting server, including nearly 2 million images that were new to authorities, according to a court filing that accompanied Marques’ guilty plea.
Marques was living in Ireland dark darknet market at the time of the offenses.He used the encrypted server in France to host more than 200 websites that site administrators and users used to upload and download child pornography.
In 2013, FBI agents in Maryland connected to the network and accessed a child pornography bulletin board with more than 7,700 members and more than 22,000 posts.Agents downloaded more than 1 million files from another website on the network, nearly all of which depicted sexually explicit images of children.
In July 2013, Irish authorities searched Marques’ home and vehicle and detained him. When investigators entered his home, Marques moved toward his computer but was subdued before he could turn it off, authorities said.
After his release from custody, Marques purchased a new laptop and logged into his server to lock out the FBI and other law enforcement, the filing says.
Authorities seized nearly $155,000 in U.S.currency from Marques. During an August 2013 extradition hearing, Marques said his business had been «very successful» and profitable.
In an April 28 court filing, a prosecutor said a government witness was prepared to testify at Wednesday’s sentencing hearing that law enforcement had identified Marques as the largest purveyor of child pornography in the world and that he made approximately $3.6 million in U.S.currency from his servers.
___
This version corrects that the judge set a June 25 deadline for a status report from attorneys, not a status conference for that date.
WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) – An international operation targeting trafficking in opioids on a clandestine part of the internet called the darknet market has led to about 150 arrests in the United States and Europe and the seizure of drugs, cash and darknet market marketplace guns, U.S.and European authorities said on Tuesday.
The crackdown, called Operation Dark HunTor, was announced at a U.S. Justice Department news conference where Deputy U.S Attorney General Lisa Monaco warned cyberspace drug sellers: «There is no dark internet. We can and we will shed a light.»
Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, deputy director of the international police agency Europol, hailed the results of Operation Dark HunTor as «spectacular.» He said the operation sends a message that «no one is beyond the reach of law enforcement, even on the dark web.» The darknet market and dark web are related terms concerning a part of the internet accessible only using a specialized web browser and the assortment of internet sites residing there.
An opioid epidemic has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone in the past two decades due to overdoses from prescription painkillers and illegal substances, constituting an enduring public health crisis.
The dark market 2023 HunTor operation produced arrests of 150 people accused of being drug traffickers and others accused of engaging in sales of illicit goods and services.
There were 65 arrests in the United States, 47 in Germany, 24 in the United Kingdom, four each in the Netherlands and Italy, darkmarkets three in France, two in Switzerland darknet market list and one in Bulgaria, the Justice Department said.
The department added that the operation resulted in seizures of more than $31.6 million in cash and virtual currencies as well as 45 firearms.It added that about 234 kilograms (515 pounds) of drugs including more than 200,000 ecstasy, fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone and methamphetamine pills were seized, along with counterfeit medicines.
Kenneth Polite, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said such trafficking presents «a global threat and it requires a global response.»
The Justice Department said the crackdown built on operations conducted in late 2020 and early 2021 to disrupt dark web trafficking.It said that in January, an international crackdown targeted DarkMarket, the world’s largest dark web international marketplace.
(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Will Dunham)
A joint investigation by Australian Federal Police, Scotland Yard, the , Europol, and German authorities, among others, led to the arrest of the man, 34, as he tried to cross the Danish border into this week.
The man, known only as Julian K, is the alleged operator of DarkMarket and has been detained by German investigators.
A screenshot of the illegal website allegedly run by the Australian man which displays drugs for sale (pictured)
DarkMarket was shut down on Monday and dark markets 2023 its servers, located in Ukraine and Moldova, were taken off the internet, prosecutors in the city of Koblenz said.
‘Until its closure, darkmarket link was probably the largest marketplace worldwide on the darknet market, with almost 500,000 users and more than 2400 sellers,’ prosecutors said.
More than 320,000 transactions were conducted via the website including the sale of drugs, counterfeit money, stolen or falsified credit cards, anonymous SIM cards and darknet markets malware.
The transactions were reportedly worth a total of 4,650 bitcoin and 12,800 monero – two cryptocurrencies – for an equivalent sum of more than $221million.
The servers will be forensically examined by authorities to uncover information about the website’s operations and criminal network.
The accused man has already fronted a German court and been denied bail – to be transferred to a German prison in the next few days.
He has reportedly refused to speak to investigators or court officials.
The man was arrested at the Danish and German border after a joint international investigation (stock image)
German prosecutors said the man was trying to flee Denmark into Germany when arrested and was travelling through Europe either on holiday or conducting business for darkmarkets the illegal website.
They said the investigation around DarkMarket originated after the discovery of a data processing centre run by organised criminals in a 5,000sqm former NATO bunker in south-west Germany.
The data facility hosted illegal websites, which included DarkMarket temporarily, and darknet market list was shut down in 2019.
The darkweb was originally developed for the United States military but has been overrun by criminals because they can conceal their identity on the platform.
La entrada Australian man accused of running world's biggest 'dark web' market se publicó primero en JugoTerapia.]]>Ilya ‘Dutch’ Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, 31, who raps under the name Razzlekhan, were arrested on Tuesday in Manhattan on federal charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Federal law enforcement officials said they recovered roughly $3.6 billon in cryptocurrency linked to the hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange whose systems were breached nearly six years ago.
Lichtenstein and Morgan live on Wall Street in lower Manhattan. He is a citizen of both and the United States and best darknet market markets the co-founder of an online marketing firm.
Morgan, a rapper and former Forbes contributor, describes herself as ‘an expert in persuasion, social engineering, and game theory’ and in one of her songs, declared herself the ‘Crocodile of Wall Street.’
Ilya ‘Dutch’ Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, 31, who raps under the name Razzlekhan, were arrested on Tuesday in Manhattan on money laundering charges
Morgan (seen in front of Federal Hall on Wall Street in a music video) declared herself the ‘Crocodile of Wall Street’ in one of her rap songs
In this courtroom sketch, attorney Sam Enzer, center, sits between Heather Morgan, left, and her husband, Ilya ‘Dutch’ Lichtenstein, in federal court on Tuesday
‘I’m many things, a rapper, an economist, a journalist, dark web markets a writer, a CEO, and a dirty, dirty, dirty dirty h*,’ she raps in her 2019 single, Versace Bedouin.
‘When she’s not reverse-engineering black markets to think of better ways to combat fraud and cybercrime, she enjoys rapping and designing streetwear fashion,’ her reads.
The August 2016 Bitfinex hack itself was one of the largest crypto heists ever recorded – so massive that news of the theft knocked 20 percent off Bitcoin’s value at the time.
Lichtenstein and Morgan are thus far not charged directly with perpetrating the hack, but rather with receiving and laundering the stolen funds. The case was filed in a federal court in Washington, D.C.
It was unclear who will be representing the couple in the criminal case and whether they had an attorney to speak on their behalf.
They were due to appear in federal court in Manhattan at 3 p.m. on Tuesday.
The couple is accused of conspiring to launder 119,754 bitcoin that was stolen, after a hacker attacked Bitfinex and initiated more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions.
Morgan, a rapper and former Forbes contributor, describes herself as ‘an expert in persuasion, social engineering, and game theory’
The couple is accused of conspiring to launder 119,754 bitcoin that was stolen, after a hacker attacked Bitfinex and initiated more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions
Justice Department officials said the transactions at the time were valued at $71 million in Bitcoin, but with the rise in the currency’s value, it is now valued at over $4.5 billion.
‘As the complaint alleges, the FBI and federal prosecutors were able to trace the movement of Bitcoin from this hack,’ said Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
He added that the money moved through a major darknet market list exchange tied to a host of crimes, as well as cryptocurrency addresses tied to child sexual abuse materials.
Lichtenstein and Morgan are facing charges of conspiring to commit money laundering, as well as to defraud the United States.
Prosecutors said on Tuesday the illegal proceeds were spent on a variety of things, from gold and non-fungible tokens to ‘absolutely mundane things such as purchasing a Walmart gift card for $500.’
Bitfinex said in a statement that it was to working with the Department of Justice to ‘establish our rights to a return of the stolen bitcoin.’
‘We have been cooperating extensively with the DOJ since its investigation began and will continue to do so,’ the company said.
Bitfinex said it intends to provide further updates on its efforts to obtain a return of the stolen bitcoin as and when those updates are available.
Tuesday’s criminal complaint came more than four months after Monaco announced the department was launching a new National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which is comprised of a mix of anti-money laundering and cybersecurity experts.
The August 2016 Bitfinex hack itself was one of the largest crypto heists ever recorded – so massive that news of the theft knocked 20 percent off Bitcoin’s value
Lichtenstein and Morgan are facing charges of conspiring to commit money laundering, as well as to defraud the United States
Morgan is seen rapping with the New York Stock Exchange behind her to the right
Cyber criminals who attack companies, municipalities and individuals with ransomware often demand payment in the form of cryptocurrency.
In one high-profile example last year, hackers caused a widespread gas shortage on the U.S. East Coast when by using encryption software called DarkSide to launch a cyber attack on the Colonial Pipeline.
The Justice Department later recovered some $2.3 million in cryptocurrency ransom that Colonial paid to the hackers.
Cases like these demonstrate that the Justice Department ‘can follow money across the blockchain, just as we have always followed it within the traditional financial system,’ said Kenneth Polite, assistant attorney general of the department’s Criminal Division.
Justice Department officials say that though the proliferation of cryptocurrency and virtual currency exchanges represent innovation, the trend has also been accompanied by money laundering, ransomware and other crimes
‘Today´s arrests, and the Department´s largest financial seizure ever, show that cryptocurrency is not a safe haven for criminals,’ Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.
‘In a futile effort to maintain digital anonymity, the defendants laundered stolen funds through a labyrinth of cryptocurrency transactions. Thanks to the meticulous work of law enforcement, the department once again showed how it can and will follow the money, no matter the form it takes.’
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LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Crime involving cryptocurrencies hit an all-time high of $14 billion last year, blockchain researcher Chainalysis said on Thursday, a record that comes as regulators call for darkmarket more powers over the fast-growing sector.
Crypto received by digital wallet addresses linked to illicit activity including scams, darknet market markets and ransomware jumped 80% from a year earlier, Chainalysis said in a report.The activity represented just 0.15% of total crypto transaction volumes, its lowest ever.
Overall volumes soared to $15.8 trillion in 2021, up over five-fold from a year earlier, dark market U.S.-based Chainalysis said. Digital assets, from bitcoin to non-fungible tokens, exploded in popularity in 2021 amid an embrace from institutional investors and major darkmarket url companies.
Newcomers have been drawn to the promise of quick gains touted by crypto backers, as well as hopes that bitcoin offers a hedge against soaring inflation. Yet cryptocurrencies are still subject to patchy regulation, leaving investors with little recourse against crime.
Financial watchdogs and policymakers from Washington to Frankfurt have fretted over the use of crypto for money laundering, with some urging lawmakers to grant them greater powers over the industry.
«Criminal abuse of cryptocurrency creates huge impediments for continued adoption, heightens the likelihood of restrictions being imposed by governments, and worst of all victimizes innocent people around the world,» Chainalysis said.
Driving the increase in crime was an explosion of scams and theft at decentralized finance – DeFi – platforms, it said.
DeFi sites – which offer lending, insurance and other financial services while bypassing traditional gatekeepers such as banks – have been plagued by problems that include flaws in underlying code and opaque governance.
Overall cryptocurrency theft grew over five-fold from 2020, with around $3.2 billion worth of coins stolen last year.Around $2.2 billion of those funds, some 72% of the total, were stolen from DeFi sites.
Scams at DeFi platforms – such as «rug pulls,» where developers set up phony investment opportunities before disappearing with investors’ cash – hit $7.8 billion, darknet market links an 82% jump from 2021, darknet Market Chainalysis said.
(Reporting by Tom Wilson; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)
La entrada Crypto crime hit record $14 billion in 2021, research shows se publicó primero en JugoTerapia.]]>
The US Justice Department announced the largest dark web bust it has ever helped carry out, dark web markets seizing more than 1,100 pounds of drugs from 179 alleged online dealers around the world. The US worked with police in Europe to carry out the investigation, seizing more than $6.5 million in cash and darknet marketplace virtual currencies.
Operation DisrupTor — named after the frequently used to access the dark web — was led by police in Germany, along with US law enforcement agencies and Europol.
The majority of the arrests took place in the US with 121 cases, followed by 42 cases in Germany, eight cases in the Netherlands, four cases in the United Kingdom, three cases in Austria and one case in Sweden. Police said investigations are still ongoing to identify people behind these dark web accounts.
The for hidden parts of the internet that you can’t easily discover through an online search. It oftendarknet market marketplaces have grown in popularity at an alarming rate and allow drug traffickers to openly advertise and take orders from anywhere in the world,» Rosen said. «The dark net invites criminals into our homes and provides unlimited access to illegal commerce.»
Operation DisrupTor used information from another major darknet marketplace darknet market raided in April 2019, FBI Director Christopher Wray said. , one of the largest dark web marketplaces online.
Investigators said they’ve tracked down more than 18,000 listed sales to alleged customers in at least 35 states and in several countries around the world. Wray noted that there’s been a spike in opioid-related overdose deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic and that the FBI will continue investigating dark web drug markets.
«Today’s announcement sends a strong message to criminals selling or buying illicit goods on the dark web: the hidden internet is no longer hidden, and your anonymous activity is not anonymous,» Edvardas Sileris, the head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, said in a statement.
The interior ministry reported another annual increase in anti-Semitic crimes, up by 15.7 per cent in 2020, with 2,351 total incidents – 94.6% of which were committed by a far-right suspect.
Of the total, Darkmarket Url 62 were acts of violence while the majority were antisemitic hate speech and other related crimes, frequently on social media.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said: ‘This development in Germany is not only troubling, but in view of our history, deeply shameful.’
A protester with an Iron Cross draped over his back outside the Reichstag at a far-right demonstration against lockdown during the summer.The symbol harks back to imperial Germany and was re-appropriated by the Nazis under Adolf Hitler
Far-right crime rose by 5.65 per cent in 2020, accounting for darkmarket url more than half of all politically-motivated criminality.
Seehofer said: ‘This shows again that right-wing extremism is the biggest threat for our country.’
It comes as Berlin police arrested a 53-year-old man on Tuesday on suspicion of sending dozens of threatening neo-Nazi letters to politicians, darkmarket lawyers and journalists.
The suspect, whose name wasn’t released for privacy reasons, has previous convictions for ‘numerous crimes, including ones that were motivated by right-wing ideology,’ said prosecutors in Frankfurt, who are handling the case.
The letters were signed ‘NSU 2.0.’ A German group called the National Socialist Underground was responsible for a string of violent crimes between 1998 and 2011, including the racially motivated killings of nine men with immigrant backgrounds and a police officer.
The group’s name was derived from the full name of the Nazi, or National Socialist, party.
Police think the suspect sent almost 100 letters to dozens of people and organizations across Germany and Austria since 2018.
German news agency dpa reported that investigators think the suspect may have obtained personal data on the people he targeted from official records or darknet market forums.
German security agencies warned of the growing threat of violent far-right extremism.
In July 2019, a regional politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party was killed by a neo-Nazi; three months later, a gunman tried to force his way into a synagogue on Yom Kippur, killing two people.
Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said the German numbers revealed by the interior ministry today highlighted a broader issue.
‘This is a wake-up call, darknet markets 2023 not just for Germany, but for the whole world,’ he said.’These figures should ring alarm bells, because we are seeing similar trends across the Western world.’
In 2020, Germany recorded a 72.4% increase in anti-immigrant crimes, up to 5,298 total cases over 3,073 in 2019, best darknet markets Seehofer said.
A bullet lies on the street in Hanau in February, 2020, after a right-wing terrorist shot nine people before turning the gun on himself
Forensic officers investigating in Hanau after the shooting which targeted immigrants in February, 2020
In the most deadly incident, nine people with immigrant backgrounds were shot dead in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in February by a gunman who had called for genocide.
Authorities have raised concerns about the role the Alternative for Germany party allegedly played in stoking a climate of resentment toward immigrants and the government.
The party, which placed third in Germany’s 2017 election, has moved steadily to the right in recent years, drawing increasing scrutiny from the country’s domestic intelligence agency.
On Tuesday, Alternative for Germany’s section in Berlin condemned a member who appeared to lament the absence of attacks on Merkel.
The news website Business Insider reported that AfD’s former chairman in Berlin, Guenter Brinker, forwarded a message stating that ‘either that piece of dirt is so well protected that nobody can get at her, or don’t the Germans have any balls?’
Brinker said later that he had mistakenly forwarded the message and regretted doing so, and that he rejected ‘all forms of hatred and violence.’
Many in the AfD have expressed support for, and participated in, the regular protests in Germany against lockdown measures, organized by the so-called Querdenker movement.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (pictured on Tuesday) said: ‘This (anti-Semitic) development in Germany is not only troubling, but in view of our history, deeply shameful.’
The demonstrations have become increasingly violent, and the country’s domestic intelligence service late last month said it had put some members of the loose-knit Querdenker movement under observation.
The protests have brought together a broad range of demonstrators, including people opposing vaccinations, others who deny the existence of the coronavirus, mask opponents, conspiracy theorists and others.
Seehofer said the protests have also attracted neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists, and have regularly become violent.
‘At these gatherings organized by the so-called Querdenker movement, attacks are directed against police officers and the press,’ Seehofer said.
‘Of the 260 reported crimes against journalists, 112 were related to corona’ protests, he said.’I want to say here very clearly: These acts of violence are no longer about exercising a constitutional right (to demonstrate), but are acts of violence of a criminal nature that I condemn in the strongest possible terms.’
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