US accuses European hackers of multi-million-dollar theft, implanting computer viruses
WASHINGTON — A band of hackers implanted viruses on hundreds of thousands of computers around the world, secretly seized customer bank information and stole more than $100 million from businesses and consumers, the Justice Department said Monday in announcing charges against the Russian man accused of masterminding the effort.
In unveiling the criminal case, federal authorities said they disrupted European-based cyber threats that were sophisticated, lucrative and global.
In one scheme, the criminals infected computers with malicious software that captured bank account numbers and passwords, then used that information to secretly divert millions of dollars from victims’ bank accounts to themselves. In another, they locked hacking victims out of their own computers, secretly encrypted personal files on the machines and returned control to the users only when ransom payments of several hundred dollars were made.
Hundreds of armed pro-Russia rebels attack Ukrainian border guard camp in restive east
LUHANSK, Ukraine — Hundreds of pro-Russia rebels armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades mounted a daylong assault Monday on a key government base used to coordinate the defense of the country’s border with Russia, prompting the deployment of air support by government forces.
Border guards killed at least five rebels in repelling the attack on their base, a spokesman for the border guard service said.
In the center of Luhansk, some six miles away, a blast at an administrative building held by the insurgents claimed more lives. A health official for the Luhansk region told Interfax news agency that at least seven people had been confirmed dead in what rebels described as a government airstrike.
The government denied carrying out an airstrike and said the blast was caused by misdirected rebel fire from a portable surface-to-air missile launcher.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry swiftly condemned what it said was a government attack on the rebel-held building and urged U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Derek Chollet, who was visiting Kiev on Monday, to help calm unrest in Ukraine.
Supreme Court won’t intervene in case of reporter ordered to testify on CIA leak
WASHINGTON — A reporter who has been ordered to divulge the identity of the source of classified information lost his bid Monday to get the Supreme Court to clarify whether journalists have a right to protect their confidential sources.
Without comment, the justices rejected an appeal from New York Times reporter James Risen to revisit the court’s 42-year-old ruling that has raised questions about journalists’ ability to shield from public view the names of people who tell them government secrets.
Risen detailed a botched CIA effort during the Clinton administration to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. His reporting is at the center of criminal charges against former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling of disclosing government secrets.
Federal prosecutors want to force Risen to testify about his sources at Sterling’s trial, but Attorney General Eric Holder has suggested that the Justice Department could find a way to defuse the situation and not subject Risen to time in jail should he refuse to testify as ordered.
Notes from a meeting with journalists last week taken by Associated Press General Counsel Karen Kaiser show that Holder said, “as long as I’m the attorney general, no reporter who is doing his or her job will go to jail. As long as I’m attorney general, someone who is doing their job will not get prosecuted.” Department officials later added that Holder wasn’t referring to any specific case.
By wire sources