From: InfoSec News (alertsinfosecnews.org)
Date: Mon Apr 21 2008 - 00:28:19 CDT

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/18/vladuz_arrested/

By Dan Goodin
The Register
18th April 2008

Vladuz, the notorious hacker who repeatedly accessed off-limits parts of
eBay's network and then publicly bragged about it, has been arrested,
the online auctioneer says.

The hacker was arrested by Romanian law enforcement officials with the
help of the US Secret Service, the FBI and eBay's global fraud
investigation team, eBay said. The company wouldn't discuss additional
details, and representatives from the Secret Service and the FBI
couldn't be reached for comment.

According to Romanian news reports here and here, Vlad Constantin
Duiculescu, 20, was arrested in a communist-era housing project in
Bucharest. A court in that city remanded the suspect in custody for an
initial 29 days.

Vladuz came to the public spotlight last year after acquiring
credentials that allowed him to access employee-only sections of eBay's
network. The breach allowed him to masquerade as an official eBay
representative in user forums. Although he never offered proof, the
hacker claimed to have the ability to gain full access to restricted
parts of eBay.

The company strongly disagreed, saying Vladuz penetrated only limited
parts of the system and never accessed sections where it handled
administrative functions of the storage of credit card numbers.

Whatever the case, the breaches were an embarrassment to a company
founded on the trust and safety of its members and fueled speculation by
a small but vocal number of users that the hacker had built a backdoor
into the system.

According to news reports, eBay pegged the total amount of damage caused
by Vladuz at $1m. Undercover eBay investigators closed in on Duiculescu
by pretending to be interested in buying one of his applications. He was
arrested after he gave them his real address. ®

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