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| Spanish police have arrested suspected webcam
spies and fraudsters. |
IT security firm Sophos has welcomed news that four people have
been arrested in Spain, in connection with a series of online
crimes including malware writing, data theft and credit card
fraud.
According to Spanish newspaper reports, two seventeen year-olds
were arrested yesterday in Alicante, charged with creating a Trojan
horse which allowed them to remotely take control of webcams within
local educational institutions. This enabled the duo to spy on
students and record compromising images, which they then used to
blackmail the victims into giving them money.
Later in the same day, two adults were arrested in Madrid, in
connection with the original inquiry. It is claimed that the adults
used the teenage malware authors to obtain confidential data in
order to commit credit card fraud. Using fake credit card details,
the two adults allegedly made purchases amounting to more than
60,000 EUR.
"The two individuals charged with creating the Trojan may be
minors, but this is no schoolboy prank - these criminals were in it
for the money, and were prepared to blackmail and steal from their
peers, as well as selling on personal information so that other
wrongdoers could get in on the act," said Carole Theriault, senior
security consultant at Sophos. "It's encouraging to see the Spanish
authorities responding to the concerns of businesses and home
computer users, and actively pursuing the perpetrators of all
online criminal behaviour."
The investigation, named 'Praxis' has been ongoing since a
Spanish computer science organisation fell victim to a hack attack
in August 2005. The Spanish authorities have also made available a
free disinfection tool for users whose computers were compromised
by the Trojan. Sophos experts note that this is not the first time
the Spanish police have had to deal with webcam-related online
crime. In February 2005 a Spanish male computer student was
fined
for spying on a young woman via her webcam, as well as monitoring
her online conversations and email communications.
"Whether it's done for financial gain or for dubious personal
reasons, spying on others using webcams is a sick and twisted thing
to do, and likely to traumatise the innocent people that suffer
this invasion of privacy," continued Theriault. "In this case,
if found guilty, the Spanish courts need to dish out a tough
sentence to all parties, in order to send out the message that this
type of online behaviour will not be tolerated."
Sophos recommends that computer users secure their PCs with a
consolidated solution to defend against
viruses, spyware and spam, as well as ensuring that their software
offers automatically updated protection.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.