Aryanews- A serial hacker, and a former secret service worker, has been charged with carrying out the largest theft of credit card identities in a sophisticated scam in which he and accomplices allegedly stole at least 130m accounts from big retail companies.
Albert Gonzales has been accused of cooperating with two unidentified Russian conspirators to hack the databases of retail chains, selling the information around the world.
The hacker has stolen the card numbers from Heartland, a company in New Jersey that processes payments, from the store 7-Eleven, and the supermarket chain Hannaford.
Gonzales is also accused of targeting two other unnamed corporations
Gonzalez — known online as "soupnazi" — was formerly employed by the US secret service to track down hackers, but was found to have been passing information on investigations to criminals.
He is already being held in jail in New York, accused with others of stealing the credit identities of about 40 million people worldwide.
Gonzalez and his Russian helpers are said to have set up a sophisticated system for hacking into and downloading credit card numbers. They began by targeting Fortune 500 companies, scouring corporate websites for security weaknesses.
The suspects are alleged to have studied the checkout machines deployed by one of their victims, using that information to break into the company's computer systems and upload information on to servers set up in three locations in the US, as well as Latvia, Ukraine and the Netherlands.
They also used malware — malicious software that attacks computer systems and systematically steals data, installing "sniffer" programmes that look for financial information.
US federal investigators and policy makers have become increasingly focused on identity theft as a criminal growth area.
Gonzalez faces 20 years in prison if convicted of the recent charges.
