A prolific gang of foreign hackers stole and sold 160 million credit card numbers from more than a dozen companies, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, federal prosecutors charged yesterday in what they described as the largest hacking and data breach case in the country, the New York Times reported yesterday. The scheme was run by four Russian nationals and a Ukrainian, said the United States attorney for the District of New Jersey, Paul J. Fishman, who announced the indictments in Newark. The victims in the scheme, which prosecutors said ran from 2005 until last year, include J. C. Penney; 7-Eleven; JetBlue; Heartland Payment Systems, one of the world’s largest credit and debit processing companies; and the French retailer Carrefour. Separate indictments involving some of the same men accusing them of computer attacks on Citibank, PNC Bank and the Nasdaq stock exchange, were also filed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
