Hacker hunting

Although it’s maybe better know known for its extreme location and beautiful landscapes, Chile has been recently making the news for hacker arrest stories. Carlos Amigo (aka SSH-2) and Leonardo Hernandez (aka Nettoxic) from the ”Byond Team” have recently been freed from jail while their case is still being investigated. Along with two other members from their group, they’ve been responsible for breaking into allegedly more than 8000 websites around the world, including the ‘Holy Grail’ of hacking – nasa.gov. YouTube has a video from the Chilean TV station ‘TVN’ on the arrest.

Across the ocean, in Spain, four people have been arrested for various charges including credit card theft and malware writing. Two of them are minors and were caught writing trojans which allowed them to capture embarassing webcam feeds that were later used to blackmail the victims.

Unfortunately, despite the number of computer crime related arrests that has been going up recently, the amount of crimeware that we have been receiving during the past months is on a constant up. These arrests are probably just the tip of the iceberg. Even so, they are most welcome.