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Cyber Risks · Krebs on Security

New Charges Derail COVID Release for Hacker Who Aided ISIS

Summary: Ardit Ferizi, a 25-year-old Kosovo citizen serving 20 years for stealing personal data on 1,300 U.S. military and government employees and giving it to an Islamic State hacker group in 2015, was charged again with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft after the Justice Department said he conspired from prison with outside associates to access stolen data and launder bitcoin proceeds. The new charges derailed a compassionate release, granted partly because of his 2018 asthma diagnosis and a COVID outbreak at his facility in 2020, that would have commuted his sentence to time served and sent him home.

Bottom line: Prosecutors say Ferizi used his access to the prison's email system to share email and bitcoin account passwords with family members, and that his brother in Kosovo used the information to liquidate the proceeds of his earlier hacking - a reminder that a convicted intruder with an email account can keep operating from inside a cell.

Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗

Topics
Data Breaches
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