Underground hacking groups do exist that are paid to steal your personal data. These groups can target anyone. The high profile case of Michael Haephrati gave us a look into this secret hackers world.
Michael Haephrati, a computer programmer, originally created the Trojan to spy and harass his former in-laws. It was his method of revenge. His wife, Ruth Brier-Haephrati saw the business opportunity in selling this capability to other people and firms.
The Trojan software evolved into a business application designed to steal the intellectual property of any individual or company. This data was then given to a "subscriber" for a fee. The data sold ranged from correspondence to economic data.
This is the creepy story of how they did it.
Between May 2003 and May 2005 a psychological hook was delivered to a specific individual. The targeted individual received an email from an address that looked like a known associate. The hook delivered by email was of a lucrative business opportunity. When the target responded to the email their computer received a Trojan from
info@targetdata.biz. If the target did not respond to the email, the target would later receive a CD in the mail that contained the psychological hook again with the Trojan hidden in the programming code.
The Trojan allowed Haephrati to remotely control the computer of the target. This Trojan included a key-logger and a store and forward capability. It had the capability of watching what someone was doing on their computer "live" or in real time. It would send files from the target computer to FTP servers located in Israel, the U.S., and other locales. Haephrati had dozens of servers located around the globe.
According to Israeli police, items stolen included business plans, marketing plans, details on new products in the making, and employee information and pay slips. This information was then sold to competitors of the target. Israeli police said that over 11 gigabytes of confidential data was obtained before they shut it down.
Subscribers of Haephratis used the service to gain economic advantage of their competition.
A subscription to Haephratis didn't come cheap. Haephratis charged a business customer $3,500 (U.S. dollars) to create a customized software program and to make the initial install on the victim's computer. The monthly fee was then $900 to maintain the infrastructure used to collect, store, and forward the secretly acquired data on a monthly basis.
The cost to victims of Haephrati's were huge. They lost their best marketing plans, new secret products in the pipe-line they were working on, and even lost the trust of their employees' because of stolen employees' personal data. All of this theft was facilitated by what are known as underground servers. The following price list was found on underground servers in 2007.
World of Warcraft accounts"one month duration $12 Verified PayPal account with balance (balance varies) $12 - $52 U.S.-based credit card with card verification value $3 - $8 Online banking account with a $10,000 balance $350 UK-based credit card with card verification value $4 - $14 An identity (including U.S. bank account, credit card, date of birth, and government-issued identification number) $16 - $20 Yahoo Mail cookie exploit"advertised to facilitate full access when successful $5 Valid Yahoo and Hotmail e-mail cookies $5 Phishing Web site hosting"per site $5 - $7 Compromised computers $8 - $22 Unverified PayPal account with balance (balance varies) $14 Skype accounts $14 List of 30,000 e-mails $7
Haephrati may have had computer smarts to design such a piece of software but when it came to common sense smarts, he had very little like most computer geeks. During his money making venture, he continued to harass his former in-laws by taking private information from their computer and posting it publicly on the Internet. Can someone say dumb? His former father-in-law went to the police in November of 2004.
The police used secret forensic tools to identify and trace the Trojan back to Haephrati's business.
In May of 2005, Michael Haephrati and his wife were arrested by British authorities in London per the request of Israeli authorities. They were extradited from the UK to Israel. They pled guilty to the charges brought against them and were convicted of economic and industrial espionage.
Word on the street is that the Haephrati's were given a secret deal with the Israeli government. He would train law enforcement and spies to use this technology in exchange for their freedom.
More Information:
By Michael Scott. To read and learn more about how to be your own private detective go to
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