Nevada Attorney General wants cyber savvy parents – News3LV
Nevada Attorney General wants cyber savvy parents News3LV
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16 Bitcoins stolen: the robbed is suing the parents of alleged thieves
With a civil suit, the American Andrew Schober wants to regain around 16 Bitcoins that were allegedly stolen from him by two young British people. Schober also took the parents of the two young men to court, reports security blogger Brian Krebs. At the time of the theft, the two alleged perpetrators were still minors and lived with their parents. According to the lawsuit, they are said to have developed and distributed malware for the theft. They also tried to launder the money they had obtained.
The from Krebs provided court documents According to Schober carried out a transaction of around 16.4 Bitcoin in January 2018 and then noticed that he no longer had control of his credit (the transaction in a block explorer). At that time it was worth around 187,000 US dollars, currently almost 800,000 US dollars, which was 95 percent of his assets at the time. He then hired experts who checked his PC and looked for traces of possible perpetrators.
Theft with a clipboard trick
The experts discovered a clipboard hijacker on his computer, which was hidden in specially prepared wallet software called “Electrum Atom”. Schober found a link to the software via a Reddit post that advertised a download with false promises.
Such hijacker malware exploits the fact that crypto-money addresses are usually not entered by hand due to their character length, but are copied and pasted via the clipboard. Whenever the victim copies an address for a transfer to the clipboard, the malicious application replaces it with another address under the control of its makers. If the address replaced in this way is used unnoticed in a transaction and the payment has been recorded in the blockchain, then the money is lost for the victim.
On the trail of the perpetrator
The month-long search for criminals, for which Schober reportedly paid US $ 10,000, finally led to the two Britons, who are now studying computer science. As evidence of their guilt, the lawsuit alleges, among other things, that one of the two suspicious pieces of code for the malware used is in the Github repository. One of the two also posted the question on Github in January 2018 as to how best to access the private key behind a…
Man Robbed of 16 Bitcoin Sues Young Thieves’ Parents – Krebs on Security
In 2018, Andrew Schober was digitally mugged for approximately $1 million worth of bitcoin. After several years of working with investigators, Schober says he’s confident he has located two young men in the United Kingdom responsible for developing a clever piece of digital clipboard-stealing malware that let them siphon his crypto holdings. Schober is now suing each of their parents in a civil case that seeks to extract what their children would not return voluntarily.
In a lawsuit filed in Colorado, Schober said the sudden disappearance of his funds in January 2018 prompted him to spend more than $10,000 hiring experts in the field of tracing cryptocurrency transactions. After months of sleuthing, his investigators identified the likely culprits: Two young men in Britain who were both minors at the time of the crime.
A forensic investigation of Schober’s computer found he’d inadvertently downloaded malicious software after clicking a link posted on Reddit for a purported cryptocurrency wallet application called “Electrum Atom.” Investigators determined that the malware was bundled with the benign program, and was designed to lie in wait for users to copy a cryptocurrency address to their computer’s temporary clipboard.
When Schober went to move approximately 16.4 bitcoins from one account to another — by pasting the lengthy payment address he’d just copied — the malware replaced his bitcoin payment address with a different address controlled by the young men.
Schober’s lawsuit lays out how his investigators traced the stolen funds through cryptocurrency exchanges and on to the two youths in the United Kingdom. In addition, they found one of the defendants — just hours after Schober’s bitcoin was stolen — had posted a message to GitHub asking for help accessing the private key corresponding to the public key of the bitcoin address used by the clipboard-stealing malware.
Investigators found the other defendant had the malware code that was bundled with the Electrum Atom application in his Github code library.
Initially, Schober hoped that the parents of the thieving teens would listen to reason, and simply return the money. So he wrote a…
Cyber-security company urges parents to monitor students use of technology
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – As students across the Tennessee Valley return to the classroom, many are using district devices for school work. A local cyber-security risk management company says parents need to be aware of the ever-present threat of hackers online.
In the 2020-2021 school year two North Alabama school systems Huntsville City Schools and Madison City Schools experienced cyber-attacks. As kids start logging on to district devices this year, the door to threats is wide open
Gray Analytics says as children connect school devices to various networks there are ways to mitigate risks of cyber hacking or ransomware attacks.
“Any device you have that’s connected to the internet which is basically everything… Is at risk of cyberattack,” explains Gray Analytics Business Operations Vice President Jennifer Elwell.
Up-to-date malware and anti-virus can be the first layer of protection but parents also need to educate their kids about ‘cyber hygiene’.
“If your child doesn’t understand basic cybersecurity principles like not clicking on links if you don’t know where it leads, they could accidentally be the way a cybercriminal gets access to the school system, no one wants that,” says Elwell.
Students need to change their passwords often, verify people’s online identity and avoid connecting to unsecured WIFI networks.
“As our children get back into extracurricular activities they may be taking their device with them to do homework at the gym or at dance. Make sure your child only access the internet through wifi that is password-protected,” says Elwell.
Elwell says it’s important for parents to understand that their kid’s cybersecurity can impact the whole family.
“Once they get onto a child’s device that’s on your network then they can penetrate the other devices on your network which very well could be your work computer,” says Elwell.
Cyber attacks are becoming more frequent, with many cybercriminals using them to hold a network or personal data for ransom.
Gray Analytics says it’s never too early to start talking about cybersecurity because technology is everywhere and even the youngest are at risk for…