{"id":6681,"date":"2017-02-17T13:17:24","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T21:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/02\/17\/news-500\/"},"modified":"2017-02-17T13:17:24","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T21:17:24","slug":"news-500","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/02\/17\/news-500\/","title":{"rendered":"Men Who Sent Swat Team, Heroin to My Home Sentenced"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2017 19:46:56 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s been a remarkable week for cyber justice. On Thursday, a Ukrainian man who hatched a plan in 2013 to send heroin to my home and then call the cops when the drugs arrived was sentenced to 41 months in prison for unrelated cybercrime charges. Separately, a 19-year-old American who admitted to being part of a hacker group that sent a heavily-armed police force to my home in 2013 was sentenced to three years probation.<\/p>\n

\"Sergei<\/p>\n

Sergei “Fly” Vovnenko, in an undated photo. In a letter to this author following his arrest, Vovnenko said he forgave me for “doxing” him — printing his real name and image — on my site.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Sergey Vovnenko<\/strong>, a.k.a. “Fly,” “Flycracker” and “MUXACC1,” pleaded guilty last year to aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors said Vovnenko operated a network of more than 13,000 hacked computers, using them to harvest credit card numbers and other sensitive information.<\/p>\n

When I first became acquainted with Vovnenko in 2013, I knew him only by his many hacker names, including \u201cFly\u201d and \u201cFlycracker,\u201d among others. At the time, Fly was the administrator of the fraud forum \u201cthecc[dot]bz,\u201d an exclusive and closely guarded Russian language board dedicated to financial fraud and identity theft.<\/p>\n

After I secretly gained access to his forum, I learned he\u2019d hatched a plot to have heroin sent to my home and to have one of his forum lackeys call the police when the drugs arrived.<\/p>\n

I explained this whole ordeal in great detail in 2015<\/a>, when Vovnenko initially was extradited from Italy to face charges here in the United States. In short, the antics didn\u2019t end when I foiled his plot to get me arrested for drug possession, and those antics likely contributed to his arrest and to this guilty plea.<\/p>\n

Vovnenko contested his extradition from Italy, and in so doing spent roughly 15 months in arguably Italy’s worst prison<\/a>. During that time, he seemed to have turned his life around, sending me postcards at Christmas time and even an apparently heartfelt apology letter.<\/p>\n

\"Seasons<\/p>\n

Seasons greetings from my pen pal, Flycracker.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

On Thursday, a judge in New Jersey sentenced Vovnenko to 41 months in prison, three years of supervised released and ordered him to pay restitution of $83,368.<\/span><\/p>\n

Separately, a judge in Washington, D.C. handed down a sentence of three year’s probation to Eric Taylor<\/strong>, a hacker probably better known by his handle “Cosmo the God<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Taylor was among several men involved in making a false report to my local police department at the time about a supposed hostage situation at our Virginia home. In response, a heavily-armed police force surrounded my home<\/a> and put me in handcuffs at gunpoint before the police realized it was all a dangerous hoax known as “swatting.”<\/p>\n

CosmoTheGod rocketed to\u00a0Internet infamy in 2013 when he and a number of other hackers set up the Web site exposed[dot]su<\/a>, which routinely “doxed” dozens of public officials and celebrities by publishing the address, Social Security numbers and other personal information on the former First Lady Michelle Obama<\/strong>, the then-director of the FBI and the U.S. attorney general, among others. The group also swatted many of the people they doxed.<\/p>\n

\"Exposed[dot]su<\/p>\n

Exposed[dot]su was built with the help of identity information obtained and\/or stolen from ssndob[dot]ru.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Taylor and his co-conspirators were able to dox so many celebrities and public officials because they hacked a Russian identity theft service called ssndob[dot]ru<\/a>. That service in turn relied upon compromised user accounts<\/a> at data broker giant LexisNexis<\/strong> to pull personal and financial data on millions of Americans.<\/p>\n

At least two other young men connected to the exposed[dot]su conspiracy have already been sentenced to prison.<\/p>\n

\"Eric<\/p>\n

Eric “CosmoTheGod” Taylor, in a recent selfie posted to his Twitter profile.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Among them was Mir Islam, a 22-year-old Brooklyn man who was sentenced last year to two years in prison for doxing and swatting<\/a>, and for cyberstalking a young woman whom he also admitted to swatting. Because he served almost a year of detention prior to his sentencing, Islam was only expected to spend roughly a year in prison, although it appears he was released before even serving the entire year.<\/p>\n

Hours after his sentencing, Taylor reached out to KrebsOnSecurity via Facetime to apologize for his actions.\u00a0Taylor, a California native, said he is trying to turn his life around, and that he has even started his own cybersecurity consultancy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I live in New York City now, have a baby on the way and am really trying to get my shit together finally,” Taylor said.<\/p>\n

If Taylor’s physical\u00a0appearance is any indication, he is indeed turning over a new leaf. At the time he was involved in publishing exposed[dot]su, the six-foot, seven-inch CosmoTheGod was easily a hundred pounds heavier than he is now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, not everyone in Taylor’s former crew is making changes for the better. According to Taylor, his former co-conspirator Islam was recently re-arrested after allegedly cyberstalking Taylor’s girlfriend. That stalking claim could not be independently confirmed, however court documents show that Islam was indeed re-arrested and incarcerated last month in New York.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Mir<\/p>\n

Mir Islam, at his sentencing hearing last year. Sketches copyright by Hennessy \/ CourtroomArt.com<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

https:\/\/krebsonsecurity.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2017 19:46:56 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s been a remarkable week for cyber justice. On Thursday, a Ukrainian man who hatched a plan in 2013 to send heroin to my home and then call the cops when the drugs arrived was sentenced to 41 months in prison for unrelated cybercrime charges. Separately, a 19-year-old American who admitted to being part of a hacker group that sent a heavily-armed police force to my home in 2013 was sentenced to three years probation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10643,10642],"tags":[11400,11401,11402,11403,2501,11404,11405,10644,11406],"class_list":["post-6681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-independent","category-krebs","tag-cosmo-the-god","tag-eric-taylor","tag-exposed-su","tag-flycracker","tag-heroin","tag-lexisnexis","tag-mir-islam","tag-other","tag-sergey-vovnenko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}