Citadel

Discuss one of the cyber crimes you have heard about, explaining the crime along with how it was discovered and investigated? What was the outcome? If the investigation is ongoing, based on the current information, what do you expect the outcome will be? Explain why.

Citadel network is a Cybercrime ring responsible for stealing more than $ 500 million from bank accounts. The criminals in charge of the ring installed keyloggers in up to 5 million computers to steal data and empty the users’ online accounts (Vincent, 2013). Some of the banks that were affected by the activities of the group included Bank of America, Express, PayPal, Royal Bank of Canada, Wells Fargo, and HSBC. The FBI and Microsoft have joined forces in an attempt to contain this unruly group.

This is the first time law enforcement and the private sector are working together to seize the operations. The two parties carried out an attack codenamed Operation b54, where more than a thousand botnets were shut down. Microsoft stated that 455 of the botnets were hosted in 40 U.S. data centers. Reuters reported that this attack would not extinguish Citadel group operations but could significantly disrupt them (Vincent, 2013). The operation of Citadel started after the source code of an infamous toolkit for cybercrime, named Zeus, was released in 2011. The code that Zeus offered had different tools for executing cybercrime, from phishing to keystroke logging.

Opportunists and enthusiasts then augmented the code on cybercrime forums and twerked the toolkit to hide from the programs which were designed to track Zeus. The affected victims were blocked from getting access to legitimate anti-virus. This investigation is still ongoing. Like many other past operations, it shows how criminals evolve and adapt. Microsoft is hunting the leader of the hacking ring by the Alias Aquabox

References

Vincent, J. (2013). $500 million botnet Citadel attacked by Microsoft and the FBI. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/500-million-botnet-citadel-attacked-by-microsoft-and-the-fbi-8647594.html 

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Citadel

Often criminals hide data. Your role as a forensics investigator is to find that data.

Citadel

• The news media often publicizes cyber crime activities. Discuss one of the cyber crimes you have heard about, explaining the crime along with how it was discovered and investigated? What was the outcome? If the investigation is ongoing, based on the current information, what do you expect the outcome will be? Explain why.