Monmouth County Man Arrested in International Cybercrime Crackdown

A resident of Middletown Township was arrested today on charges he used a silent and malicious hacking software known as "Blackshades" to hack into social media accounts, spread viruses and snatch sensitive information. 

Marlen Rappa, 41, of Pacific Avenue in North Middletown was arrested at home by federal authorities on Monday morning in a coordinated sweep by law enforcement in more than a dozen countries. He faces computer hacking charges in Manhattan Federal Court.

According to court documents released by Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rappa conspired with others to purchase $40 malware from Blackshades on Feb. 29, 2012.

Before the FBI executed a search warrant at his home in March and seized his six-year old computer from his garage, Rappa is alleged to have used the Blackshades Remote Access Tool (known as the RAT) to infect at least 35 victims' computers with the Blackshades keylogger tool to capture passwords, spy on 45 victims using their web cameras, and steal photos and video files from approximately 95 victims' computers. The stolen photographs included sexually explicit images, authorities said. 

According to the court documents signed by FBI Special Agent Samad D. Shahrani, Rappa, was allegedly known as "nelram," is said to have used a variety of other hacking tools, such as "Dark Comet 5.2" which is another brand of Remote Access Tool. Other folders in his computer appeared to contain tools called JRAT, Sharpeye RAT, Pocket RAT, Cerberus RAT, Xtreme RAT and Syla RAT. 

The FBI says that since about 2010, several thousand people in more than 100 countries have purchased the Blackshades RAT and infected more than half a million computers worldwide. 

The FBI said it traced Rappa fter obtaining records from Google for the email account created by Rappa on January 29, 2012, which revealed his IP address, email subscriber name ("Marlen R.") and phone number. The feds used this information to link him to Blackshades through the company's Hotmail email account for customer support, which it had also received a warrant to search. 

Read more about the international raid in this article in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and CNN.