ATLANTA–Computer hackers stole one billion e-mail addresses from US marketing companies in what federal authorities Friday called one of the largest reported data breaches in US history.Three people were indicted on federal charges after they allegedly netted US$2 million in commissions from millions of spam e-mails that routed recipients to Web sites selling software and other products.
That means the defendants would have averaged just a fraction of a penny for each of the stolen e-mail addresses. Still, authorities said the case is significant because of the scale of the information stolen. John Horn, the acting US attorney based in Atlanta, said hackers targeted marketing companies that send bulk e-mails to customers of their commercial clients. The hackers not only stole hundreds of millions of email addresses, Horn said, but they also succeeded in using the marketing firms' own systems to send the hackers' spam messages.
AP