Ring of Cyber-Peepers Brought Down

Authorities have arrested 16 people across Europe who were using malicious software to hijack web cameras.

A list of those targeted in the United Kingdom:

• Two 33-year-old men and a 30-year-old woman arrested in Leeds.
• A 20-year-old man arrested in Chatham, Kent.
• A 40-year-old, arrested in Darlington, whose gender wasn't disclosed.
• A search warrant was also executed on a 19-year-old man from Liverpool who was brought in for voluntary questioning.

Another 11 people were arrested in Estonia, France, Romania, Latvia, Italy, and Norway.

UK authorities did not say if the individuals had anything to do with the notorious site - Insecam – that, until recently, was showcasing feeds from webcams secured with default passwords. That site is believed to be based in Russia.

The apprehended individuals allegedly used so-called remote-access Trojans to take over devices. “RAT”s grant bad guys complete control over targeted computers anywhere in the world, enabling them to turn victims' webcams on and off, to access banking or other personal information, to download new and potentially illegal content, or to use the victim's computer to commit additional crimes.

Computers typically become infected when users click on an email attachment or link purporting to be a legitimate file, but actually is an installer for the RAT.

The Insecam maneuvering doesn’t seem to have involved RAT malware.

In that case, the hackers apparently used tools that crawl the Internet looking for insecure web-enabled cameras, and then apparently broke in by guessing their weak passwords.