40 articles
AlphaBay
AlphaBay was a darknet marketplace on Tor, online December 2014 to July 2017, selling drugs, weapons, malware, and stolen data for Bitcoin, Monero, and Ethereum. Founded by Alexandre Cazes (Alpha02), it was seized in Operation Bayonet as the largest darknet market to that date, with over $1 billion in transactions.
Ankit Fadia
Ankit Fadia (born 1985, Ahmedabad) is an Indian author and self-proclaimed ethical hacker famous from his 2001 book An Unofficial Guide to Ethical Hacking; his hacking claims are widely disputed and his books documented as heavily plagiarized.
Anonymous (hacker group)
Anonymous is a decentralized hacktivist collective originating on 4chan in 2003, known for Project Chanology, Operation Payback, Arab Spring operations, the Guy Fawkes mask, and its legacy in later hacktivist groups.
Anthony Pellicano wiretapping scandal
The Anthony Pellicano wiretapping scandal was a federal investigation of Hollywood private investigator Anthony Pellicano, who wiretapped celebrities' opponents for clients and was convicted in 2008.
Bangladesh Bank robbery
The Bangladesh Bank robbery, also called the Bangladesh Bank heist, was a 2016 theft of $81 million via fraudulent SWIFT payments, attributed to North Korean hackers.
Carding (fraud)
Carding is payment card fraud: stealing or buying card data and using it for unauthorized purchases, via card-testing bots, carding forums, and dark web marketplaces; covers US federal offenses from access device fraud to wire fraud.
Click fraud
Click fraud, also called click spam, is the deceptive clicking of pay-per-click ads, either to inflate a publisher's ad revenue or to exhaust a competitor's advertising budget.
Cybercrime
Cybercrime: criminal activity committed against or by means of computers and ICT; no international definition exists. Divided into cyber-dependent and cyber-enabled offences plus online child sexual exploitation; governed internationally by the 2001 Budapest Convention.
Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012
Republic Act 10175, the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, is the Philippine law signed September 12, 2012 defining cybercrime offenses including cyber libel, data preservation duties, and the DOJ Office of Cybercrime; partly voided in Disini v. Secretary of Justice (2014).
Danielle K. Citron
Danielle Keats Citron is an American law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law whose scholarship on cyberstalking, nonconsensual intimate imagery, and deepfakes reshaped United States law on online harassment.
Darknet market
Darknet markets (cryptomarkets, DNMs) are Tor-accessible e-commerce sites trading illicit goods, mainly drugs (about two thirds of activity), using cryptocurrency escrow; Silk Road (2011) was the first, followed by dozens of successors despite takedowns and exit scams.
Doxbin (darknet)
Doxbin (darknet), also called the Doxbin, is the biggest public doxing website, historically on Tor, hosting over 176,000 doxes with personal data, tied to extortion, swatting, and far-right operators, with mostly denied removal requests.
Doxing
Doxing, also spelled doxxing, is the deliberate public release of personal information like addresses and phone numbers to shame or menace someone, a term from 1990s hacker culture.
Dream Market
Dream Market was an English-language Tor darknet marketplace launched 15 November 2013, the largest after AlphaBay's takedown, accepting BTC, BCH, and XMR, which closed voluntarily in March 2019 citing DDoS extortion, unlike raided markets such as Silk Road, AlphaBay, and Hansa.
Email spam
Email spam, also known as unsolicited bulk email or junk email, is unsolicited commercial email sent indiscriminately; the first such message went over ARPANET in 1978.
Fancy Bear
Fancy Bear, also known as APT28 or Sofacy, is a Russian state-sponsored cyber-espionage group assessed as GRU Unit 26165, active since 2004 and behind the 2016 DNC hack.
Forum spam
Forum spam: unsolicited commercial or link-bearing posts on discussion forums, mostly automated and aimed at building search-ranking backlinks. Key stats: 96% of registrations rejected, 85% of blocks from reputation lists.
Gary McKinnon
Gary McKinnon, Scottish hacker known as Solo, accessed 97 US military and NASA computers from London in 2001-2002; his decade-long UK extradition fight ended in 2012 when Theresa May blocked removal on suicide-risk human rights grounds.
Grey hat
Grey hat: a hacker who breaks into systems without permission but without malicious intent, often disclosing flaws. Between white hat (authorized) and black hat (criminal); still illegal, folk term from Western films.
Hamza Bendelladj
Hamza Bendelladj, aka Bx1, is an Algerian hacker co-developer and marketer of the SpyEye banking trojan; arrested in Bangkok in 2013, extradited to the US, and sentenced in 2016 to 15 years in prison.
Hunter Moore
Hunter Edward Moore is an American convicted criminal from Sacramento, California, who ran the revenge porn site Is Anyone Up? and was sentenced to federal prison in 2015.
Internet fraud
Internet fraud is deception via digital channels to steal money, data, or identities. Also called cyber-enabled fraud or online scams; includes phishing, romance, investment, and business email compromise scams, with $16.6 billion in US losses reported to the FBI in 2024.
Is Anyone Up?
Is Anyone Up? (isanyoneup.com) was Hunter Moore's 2010-2012 revenge porn website posting nonconsensual nude photos with victims' social media links; shut down after an FBI investigation, Moore sentenced to 30 months in 2015.
Jeremy Hammond
Jeremy Hammond, also known as Anarchaos, is an American political activist and hacker from Chicago who hacked the intelligence firm Stratfor in 2011 and leaked its emails to WikiLeaks.
Jonathan James
Jonathan James (cOmrade), American hacker born 1983, first US juvenile sentenced to custody for hacking; breached DTRA and NASA in 1999, downloading $1.7 million ISS software; died May 18, 2008 during TJX investigation.
Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick (1963–2023) was an American hacker and social engineer who became one of the FBI's most wanted computer criminals before a 1995 arrest in Raleigh.
Kim Dotcom
Kim Dotcom (Kim Schmitz, also Kim Tim Jim Vestor), German-Finnish founder of file-sharing site Megaupload, shut down by the FBI in 2012; fighting US extradition from New Zealand since his January 2012 arrest.
Lazarus Group
Lazarus Group (Hidden Cobra, Labyrinth Chollima, ZINC/Diamond Sleet; MITRE G0032) is a North Korean state-sponsored hacking cluster attributed to the Reconnaissance General Bureau, known for the 2014 Sony Pictures attack, WannaCry, the APT38/BlueNoroff bank-theft subunit, and record cryptocurrency thefts including the 2025 Bybit hack.
List of hacker groups
List of hacker groups: notable collectives from Anonymous and LulzSec to Cult of the Dead Cow, state-sponsored APT28, APT29, and Lazarus Group, and ransomware gangs Qilin, LockBit, and Black Basta, with origins, motives, and signature attacks.
Lizard Squad
Lizard Squad is a cybercriminal group behind the Christmas 2014 DDoS attacks on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live; it also ran the Lizard Stresser DDoS-for-hire tool ($6–$500 per attack) and saw several teenage members arrested in the UK, US, Netherlands, and Finland.