Spam: WashPost: Computers Seized in Data-Theft Probe:
According to an account provided by the teenaged member of the hacker group — and confirmed by the law enforcement source who insisted on anonymity — the LexisNexis break-in was set in motion by a blast of junk e-mail. Sometime in February a small group of hackers … sent out hundreds of e-mails with a message urging recipients to open an attached file to view pornographic child images. The attachments had nothing to do with child porn; rather, the files harbored a virus (sic) that allowed the group’s members to record anything a recipient typed on his or her computer keyboard.
According to the teenage source, a police officer in Florida was among those who opened the infected e-mail message. Not long after his computer was infected with the keystroke-capturing virus, the officer logged on to his police department’s account at Accurint, a LexisNexis service provided by Florida-based subsidiary Seisint Inc. …
The young hacker said the group members then created a series of sub-accounts using the police department’s name and billing information. Over several days, the hacker said the group looked up thousands of names in the database, including friends and celebrities. The law enforcement source said the group eventually began selling Social Security numbers and other sensitive consumer information to a ring of identity thieves in California.