Payback for some Eastern European Hackers

Well it seems that there truly is no honor among thieves. A group of cyber criminals stole the personal information and log in credentials of a rival group of Eastern European cyber criminals. Yeah for us good guys, for once we weren't victimized!!

According to IntelCrawler, a leading security firm, the victims were members of "Verified", one of the largest online forums in Eastern Europe. Most of the information on the forums focused on how to commit bank fraud in countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.

It is believed the attack is the result of a group of administrators from a rival crime forum and proves cyber criminals are just as vulnerable to attack as the rest of us.

The attack worked by exploiting a PHP vulnerability in CNStats STD 4.3, a web application used to monitor traffic. The breach made it easy for the cyber criminals to access material dated as far back as 2011. Attackers also gained access to the MySQL database that contained user login information for more than 18,894 criminals. Hopefully law enforcement will be able to take advantage of this and make some arrests.

Even if a wide spread crackdown never materializes we can still benefit from this attack (and perhaps get a little joy out of it). This attack enforces the idea of staying current on software patching. If patches aren't available for the software you are currently using I would suggest looking into replacing it. If hackers are willing to turn on each other you know they won't think twice about going after us.

For more information on this story check out Fahmida Y. Rashid's article Hacked Cybercrime Forum Exposes Nearly 20,000 "Bad Actors" . The link is listed below.

http://www.securityweek.com/hacked-cybercrime-forum-exposes-nearly-20000-bad-actors