An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: A former employee of prominent home security company ADT has admitted that he hacked into the surveillance feeds of dozens of customer homes, doing so primarily to spy on naked women or to leer at unsuspecting couples while they had sex. Telesforo Aviles, 35, pleaded guilty to a count of computer fraud in federal court this week, confessing that he inappropriately accessed the accounts of customers some 9,600 times over the course of several years. He is alleged to have done this to over 200 customers.

Authorities say that the IT technician "took note of which homes had attractive women, then repeatedly logged into these customers' accounts in order to view their footage for sexual gratification." He did this by adding his personal email address to customer accounts, which ultimately hooked him into "real-time access to the video feeds from their homes." Aviles, who now faces up to five years in prison, sometimes "claimed he needed to add himself temporarily in order to 'test' the system; in other instances, he added himself without their knowledge," officials said. "This defendant, entrusted with safeguarding customers' homes, instead intruded on their most intimate moments," acting U.S. Attorney Prerak Shah said in a statement. "We are glad to hold him accountable for this disgusting betrayal of trust." The scandal has inspired multiple lawsuits -- three of which are ongoing. ADT tried using confidentiality agreements to keep some customers silent.

The company told BuzzFeed that it is "continuing to respond to the lawsuits and has resolved the concerns of most of the 220 impacted customers, including those who have retained attorneys to address the issue."

Extortion groups that send emails threatening companies with DDoS attacks unless paid a certain fee are making a comeback, security firm Radware warned today. From a report: In a security alert sent to its customers and shared with ZDNet this week, Radware said that during the last week of 2020 and the first week of 2021, its customers received a new wave of DDoS extortion emails. Extortionists threatened companies with crippling DDoS attacks unless they got paid between 5 and 10 bitcoins ($150,000 to $300,000).

Radware said that some of the emails it seen were sent by a group that was active over the 2020 summer when the extortionists targeted many financial organizations across the world. Companies that received this group's emails last summer also received new threats over the winter, Radware said. The security firm believes that the rise in the Bitcoin-to-USD price has led to some groups returning to or re-prioritizing DDoS extortion schemes.

Intel said it was the victim of a hacker who stole financially sensitive information from its corporate website on Thursday, prompting the company to release its earnings statement ahead of schedule.ÂFrom a report: The US computer chipmaker believed an attacker had obtained advanced details about a strong earnings report it was due to publish after the stock market closed, said George Davis, chief financial officer. It published its formal earnings announcement upon discovering the problem, six minutes before the market closed. Intel's shares rose more than 6 per cent on Thursday, including almost 2 per cent in the final 15 minutes of trading. "An infographic was hacked off of our PR newsroom site," Mr Davis said. "We put [our earnings] out as soon as we were aware." He did not provide more details, but said that the leak was the result of an illicit action that had not involved any unintentional disclosure by the company itself. An Intel spokesperson added: "We were notified that our infographic was circulating outside the company. I do not believe it was published. We are continuing to investigate this matter."