Two Vietnamese citizens and a Canadian have been charged with running a massive cyber-fraud ring that stole 1 billion email 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 email companies that were victimized, though it appeared that the breaches included a massive 2011 attack on email marketing firm Epsilon.
Security blogger Brian Krebs reported that Epsilon, a unit of Alliance Data Systems Corp, was among the victims. That high-profile 2011 attack was followed by a wave of customer notifications from Epsilon clients, including Citigroup Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Epsilon representatives could not be reached.
The government alleges that Nguyen and Giang Hoang Vu, 25, both Vietnamese citizens, used the stolen email addresses to identify tens of millions of people who they targeted in a spam campaign. The spam emails directed recipients to websites selling software that was falsely branded as Adobe Systems Inc's.
Nguyen remains at large.
Court documents allege that 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.
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