(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Today in international tech news: Six people are arrested for their role in a hacking-based bank heist; Samsung invests in research to find replacements for rare earths; Google and Microsoft team up to rid searches on child abuse materials -- and the UK will use its NSA equivalent to help; and China's Tencent to offer an absurd 2 TB of data.

Six people have been arrested for their involvement in a worldwide ATM heist that resulted in the theft of US$45 million from two Middle East banks.

Five men and one woman, all from the suburbs of New York City, were charged with being members of a cybercrime outfit that lifted debit card information from MasterCard. The six people were accused of being "cashers" in the crime ring; they reportedly withdrew nearly $3 million from 140 ATMs in NYC. There are believed to have been similar "cells" in more than 20 countries.

The complicated operation worked by hacking into, and stealing debit card data from, the National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates and the Bank Muscat in Oman. The hackers then raised the withdrawal limits on cards and went to town.
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