Wherever white-collar crimes happen, Irvine's aisles of nameless, indistinguishable boxy office buildings will somehow be involved. Exhibit #3945: the case of “The Analyst,” a.k.a. Israeli hacker Ehud Tenebaum.
Tenebaum hacked the Pentagon as a teenager, and then went to work as a good-guy cybergenius for the Israeli government when he was caught. But Tenebaum, now 29, was arrested last year in Canada for allegedly stealing $1.5 million from Canadian banks. Right before he was about to be released on bail in Canada, United States officials extradited him to America for $10 million in alleged hacks that occurred to companies in the land of free/home of brave.
As WIRED is now reporting, Irvine-based Global Cash Card plays an big role in the government's case against Tenebaum. The company, which can “provide you with the best full service payroll card solution in the industry” according to its website, was one of the companies named in an affidavit as being targets of Tenebaum's global “cashout” hacking scheme.
Out of the $10 million Tenebaum allegedly stole from U.S. companies, less than one million came from Global Cash Card. And the company's defenses eventually proved as difficult to penetrate for Tenebaum as Irvine's circular city plan is difficult for newcomers to navigate:
In one instant message chat in April 2008, Tenenbaum allegedly
discussed trying to hack into Global Cash Card after system
administrators at the company apparently locked him out from an initial
intrusion.
“Yesterday I rechecked [Global Cash Card]. They are still blocking
everything,” he allegedly wrote. “So we can't hack them again.”
The full WIRED story is pretty intriguing. Read it here.
