Hacks

Bryan Connor Herrell, 25, AlphaBay Moderator pleads guilty for his job role in the fraudulent organization. Herrell’s job role is to resolve disputes between vendors and purchasers. The AlphaBay was an illicit market place operated on the  darknet , vendors, and customers engaged in exchanging different types of illicit goods such as stolen identity information, credit card numbers and other illegal items. The market was taken down on 20 July 2017, as a result of law enforcement operations, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Dutch National Police, with the support of  Europol . Websites takedown on 20 July 2017 Before takedown AlphaBay had more than 200 000 users, 40 000 vendors and more than 1 billion was transacted in the market since it was created. According to  court documents , Herrell went by the name “Penissmith” and “Botah” in the marketplace, his job role is to settle a dispute between the...

A 22-year-old man who claimed to have  access to over 300 million iCloud accounts  and threatened to factory reset all accounts unless Apple pays ransom has pleaded guilty in London for trying to blackmail Apple. In March 2017, Kerem Albayrak from North London claimed to be a spokesman for a hacking group called the " Turkish Crime Family " and in possession of 319 million iCloud accounts. Albayrak gave Apple a deadline until April 7, 2017, to pay up $75,000 in crypto-currency or $100,000 worth of iTunes gift cards in return for deleting the copy of stolen database, the U.K. National Crime Agency said in a  statement , calling the blackmailer a "fame-hungry cyber-criminal." However, if the company failed to meet his demands, Albayrak threatened that he would start remotely wiping the victim's Apple devices, factory reset iCloud accounts, and dump the stolen database online. In late March 2017, the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit arrested Albayrak at hi...