Two Vietnamese citizens and a Canadian have been charged with running a massive cyber fraud ring that stole one billion e-mail addresses, then sent spam offering knockoff software products, the US Department of Justice said on Friday.
The justice department described the hacking spree as "one of the largest" data breaches uncovered in US history. It declined to name the e-mail companies that were victimised, though it appeared the breaches included a massive 2011 attack on e-mail marketing firm Epsilon.
Security blogger Brian Krebs reported Epsilon, a unit of Alliance Data Systems, was among the victims. That high-profile 2011 attack was followed by a wave of customer notifications from Epsilon clients, including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.
Krebs noted the government's press release said the data breach "was the subject of a congressional inquiry and testimony before a US House of Representatives subcommittee on 2 June 2011". The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on that data about breaches at Sony and Epsilon, according to Krebs.
Epsilon representatives could not be reached.
Viet Quoc Nguyen, 28, is charged with hacking at least eight e-mail service providers between February 2009 and June 2012.
The government alleges Nguyen and Giang Hoang Vu, 25, both Vietnamese citizens, used the stolen e-mail addresses to identify tens of millions of people who they targeted in a spam campaign. The spam e-mails directed recipients to Web sites selling software that was falsely branded as Adobe Systems'.
Both men resided in the Netherlands. Vu, who was extradited to the US in March last year, pleaded guilty on Thursday to conspiracy to commit computer fraud.
Nguyen remains at large.
The other defendant, Canadian David-Manuel Santos Da Silva, 33, was charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is the co-owner of a company called 21 Celsius, which struck up a marketing arrangement with Nguyen and Vu to generate revenue and launder the proceeds, according to the indictment.
Court documents allege Da Silva and Nguyen received about $2 million in commissions from the sale of the software, which they marketed as Adobe Reader 10 for $65 a copy.
Da Silva was arrested at a Florida airport last month and was set to be arraigned on Friday in Atlanta federal court, according to the justice department.
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