A U.S. District Court judge on Monday ordered the assets frozen for a Russian man, his company BroCo Investments and his co-conspirators. The defendants are accused of using stolen credentials to access online brokerage accounts to boost the share prices of thinly traded stocks, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission complaint. The 36-year-old ringleader, Valery Maltsev, and his cohorts purchased unauthorized stock orders on behalf of the victims, a move that inflated the share prices. Then, the defendants, who personally owned the same stocks, sold their positions at "artificially inflated prices." The scam resulted in $255,532 in ill-gotten gains and was a violation of federal laws, according to the SEC. — DK

The "Kneber" botnet is made up of 74,126 machines from nearly 2,500 organizations that were infected with a variant of Zeus, according to researchers at a network security firm.

A San Francisco-based hacker accused of stealing and then selling hundreds of thousands of credit card numbers must spend 13 years behind bars, a federal judge has ruled.

Companies in the energy and oil sectors experienced a 356 percent higher rate of data-theft trojans in 2009 compared to other verticals, according to Scan Safe's newly released Global Threat Report.

Incidents of identity fraud and the total cost of fraud once again climbed last year, but consumers are becoming better equipped to respond to the occurrences of theft, according to a report released Wednesday by Javelin Strategy & Research.

A new banking trojan has arrived on the scene and it uses unique features to steal login information, researchers at SecureWorks said Tuesday.

Lincoln National Corp. (LNC), a Radnor, Pa.-based financial services organization, revealed early this month that a vulnerability in its portfolio information system could have caused the personal records of more than one million individuals to be inappropriately accessed.

Another Romanian citizen has admitted to his role in a massive phishing campaign that delivered fraudulent emails to victims, prosecutors in Connecticut announced Thursday.

A hacker recently accessed a computer server hosting the online banking system of the Long Island, N.Y.-based Suffolk County National Bank (SCNB), putting customer login information at risk.

Breached processor Heartland Payment Systems has agreed to a settlement with Visa worth up to $60 million.