US officials charged suspected computer hackers with stealing 1 billion e-mail addresses from US marketing companies in what federal authorities on Friday called one of the largest reported data breaches in US history.
Three people were indicted on federal charges after they allegedly netted US$2 million in commissions from millions of spam e-mails that routed recipients to Web sites selling software and other products.
That means the defendants would have averaged just a fraction of a US penny for each stolen address. Still, authorities said the case is significant because of the scale of the information allegedly stolen.
John Horn, the acting US attorney based in Atlanta, said hackers targeted marketing firms that send bulk e-mails to customers of their commercial clients. They gained access to the firms’ computer systems by sending e-mails with hidden malware to the marketing companies’ employees, he added.
The hackers not only stole hundreds of millions of e-mail addresses, Horn said, but they also succeeded in using the marketing firms’ own systems to send the hackers’ spam messages.
One defendant, 25-year-old Vietnamese citizen Giang Hoang Vu, pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud before a US federal judge last month. He has not been sentenced.
A second Vietnamese citizen, 28-year-old Viet Quoc Nguyen, has been indicted on 29 counts, including charges of wire fraud and computer fraud.
David-Manuel Santos Da Silva, 33, of Montreal, is charged with taking part in a money-laundering conspiracy. Prosecutors say he entered into a marketing agreement with the others that enabled them to profit from sales generated by the spam e-mails.
Officials said Da Silva was arrested in Florida last month. Nguyen remains a fugitive.
US District Court records on Friday did not have a defense attorney listed for Da Silva.
The case is being prosecuted in Georgia because computer servers for two of the allegedly hacked marketing firms are in the state.
Nguyen and Vu were indicted in October 2012, but those charges were sealed until after the case against Da Silva was filed on Wednesday.
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