Law and Order

Over a year after the arrest of eight of its members in Russia, the alleged leader of the original Carberp botnet ring that stole millions from bank accounts worldwide has been arrested, along with about 20 other members of the ring who served as its malware development team. The arrests, reported by the news site Kommersant Ukraine, were a collaboration between Russian and Ukrainian security forces. The alleged ringleader, an unnamed 28-year-old Russian citizen, and the others were living throughout Ukraine.

A 17-year-old youth appeared in Parramatta Children's Court on Friday (5 April 2013) to face charges relating to unauthorised access to computer data.

The juvenile is suspected to be a member of the online issue motivated group "Anonymous" and allegedly committed serious offences on their behalf.

As part of an ongoing German patent struggle, Motorola on Thursday won a ruling from the country's Federal Patent Court, which said found all claims of Apple's "slide to unlock" user interface property invalid, though the decision can be appealed.

Authorities have arrested a man in Wisconsin that has been allegedly connected to the infamous hacking group Anonymous.

Officials say Eric J. Rosol, 37, participated in Anonymous’ take down of Koch Industries’ website during protests in the Wisconsin capital in 2011, including www.kochind.com and www.quiltednorthern.com on February 27 and 28 in 2011.

In an Arizona court case, the FBI has been forced to defend its use of a phony cellphone tower dubbed Stingray that it's using to analyse mobile phone traffic and identify suspects.

The Stingray system came to light in the case of Daniel David Rigmaiden, who stands accused of reaping millions of dollars from filing phony tax returns on the basis of identity theft. The FBI were able to catch Rigmaiden in 2008 by tracking down the 3G card he was using as a modem, but it didn't disclose that the Stingray had been used in this process without a warrant.

A federal court in Missouri has rejected an escrow firm's attempt to blame its bank for a $440,000 cyberheist in March 2010.

In a ruling last week, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri held that Choice Escrow and Land Title LLC had essentially failed to follow its bank's recommended security procedures and therefore had only itself to blame for the loss.

A US teenager has been arrested and charged with hacking into the phones of at least eight children and posting naked images to child pornography sites.

Michael William Cook, 17, of Acworth, Georgia was arrested on eight counts of cruelty to children and one count of sexually exploiting children. According to Cobb County Police Sgt. Dana Pierce, Cook was arrested at Harrison High School and is accused of posting photos of his victims, one of whom is as young as 14, to child pornography websites between November 2012 and January 2013.

Hewlett-Packard and Oracle are beginning to outline the arguments they’ll be presenting next month when a jury trial starts in the second phase of their court dispute over Intel’s Itanium platform.

In a hearing earlier this month, HP officials indicated they planned to seek damages from Oracle of $4 billion or more, saying the software giant damaged its high-end server business when Oracle officials announced in 2011 that the company would no longer support the Itanium platform, saying that Intel was planning to end the chip line.

On Friday evening, a jury ruled that Cisco owes patent licenser XpertUniverse Inc $70 million in damages for obtaining patented technology in a fraudulent manner, Reuters reported. The jury ruled that Cisco owed an additional $34,000 for violating two XpertUniverse patents, as well.

Experts have often pointed out that insider threats can be just as dangerous as a sophisticated attack coming from outside the organization. An incident that occurred in Hoboken, a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, is a perfect example.

46-year-old Patrick Ricciardi, the chief IT officer for the mayor’s office, has pleaded guilty to hacking into the email accounts of the mayor and other staff members in an attempt to intercept communications, nj.com reports.