Police Sell Cyberattackers $1M Bitcoin Stash To Compensate Victims

Police Sell Cyberattackers $1M Bitcoin Stash To Compensate Victims
UK police have seized Bitcoin worth more than £920,000 ($1.1 million) from a 27-year-old convicted of computer crimes -- and they're now planning to sell it to compensate his victims.

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: Authorities said Grant West used a tool called Sentry MBR to launch brute-force attacks against 17 companies, where he gained access to user accounts, which he later hijacked and resold on the dark web to other criminals. London police said the list of victims included some high profile names such as Uber, Groupon, T Mobile, Just Eat, Asda, and Sainsburys... Authorities said West, who used the moniker of "Courvoisier," started trading stolen accounts on the dark web in March 2015, and made more than 47,000 sales before his arrest. He also sold cannabis, along with hacking tutorials. West did all of this using his girlfriend's laptop.

After his arrest, UK police said they found "fullz" (a term short for "full credentials" and used to describe email, username, and password combos) for more than 100,000 people on this laptop. They also found an SD card storing 78 million individual usernames and passwords, as well as 63,000 credit and debit card details. The Guardian reports that West agreed to give up his Bitcoin after a judge told him that if he didn't, he'd spend an additional four years in jail.



Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.