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"Five hackers have been charged with attacking the computer networks of more than a dozen major corporations and stealing at least 160 million credit and debit card numbers in an operation that spanned seven years. Prosecutors called this the largest hacking and data theft case in the United States.\nThe group of hackers, comprised of four Russians and one Ukrainian, was formally charged in New Jersey on Thursday and accused of conspiring to penetrate the networks of large corporations like Nasdaq, 7-Eleven, JCPenney and Dow Jones, among others. \nSee also: Hackers Convert Verizon Device Into Mobile Spy Stations\nThe hackers from Russia are Vladimir Drinkman (32), Aleksandr Kalinin (26), Roman Kotov (32) and Dmitriy Smilianets (29); Mikhail Rytikov (26) hails from Ukraine. They were all charged with conspiracy to commit unauthorized computer access and wire fraud. The former can be punished with five years in prison and $250,000 in fines; the latter can be punished with 30 years in prison and $1 million in fines.\nThe five conspirators \"operated a prolific hacking organization that was responsible for several of the largest known data breaches,\" the indictment (.PDF) read. \n\"The defendants charged today were allegedly responsible for spearheading a world-wide hacking conspiracy that victimized a wide array of consumers and entities, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses,\" said Department of Justice Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman in a press release.\nProsecutors believe the hackers' data breaches produced hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. The largest breach involved Heartland Payment Systems, which is among the world\u2019s largest credit and debit processing companies, and cost the company $200 million. \nThe group of hackers also stole the credentials of the credit and debit card owners. Prosecutors believed they broke into Nasdaq and Dow Jones networks to obtain customers' logins and passwords. \nThe group frequently communicated via online instant messages \u2014 sometimes encrypted ones \u2014 to notify one another of successful hacks. \n\"Nasdaq is owned,\" said Kalinin told Albert Gonzalez (aka \"soupnazi\"), another co-conspirator convicted in 2010 to 20 years in prison, according to the indictment. \nThey also used Google news alerts to find out when their operations were detected. \n\"I get emailed news articles immediately when they come out, you should do the same, its [sic] how I find out when my hacks are found :),\" Gonzalez reportedly told Kalinin. \nTheir conversations sometimes included jokes.\n\"Hannaford [one of the victimized corporations] will spend millions to upgrade their security!! lol,\" Gonzalez wrote to Kalining, who responded: \"Haha. They would better pay us no to hack them again.\"\nHas your credit or debit card information ever been hacked? Tell us in the comments below.\nCORRECTION, 07/26/2013: A previous version of this article stated that Visa was among the victims, when, in fact, it was Visa Jordan Card Services (now known as Emerging Markets Payments \u2013 Jordan). This is an independent third party payment processor that is not part of Visa Inc.  \nPhoto by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/07/25/hackers-nasdaq-visa-breach/>