Albert Gonzalez and alleged conspirators allegedly scouted both retail outlets and Web sites for data security weaknesses after first obtaining a list of potential victims from perusing a list of top-flight U.S. firms.
The two count indictment handed down in the U.S. District Court for New Jersey alleged that Gonzalez and an unidentified co-conspirator called only PT would identify potential victims and then travel to the retail locations or Web sites to assess their weakness. Once identified, the Gonzalez and the others allegedly injected Structured Query Language code into the systems and then, among other things, created "backdoors" to let them access the systems at a later date and actually place the code they used to find and steal the credit and debit card numbers.
The conspirators allegedly coordinated their hacking efforts through instant messages back and forth.
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