US federal prosecutors charged a cadre of eastern European hackers with stealing credit-card information and other personal data from companies including Nasdaq OMX, JC Penney and 7-Eleven, in a computer crime spree that ran for more than half a decade and netted hundreds of millions of dollars.

The alleged intrusions, dating back to 2005 and detailed in criminal charges unsealed on Thursday, mark what could be the biggest hacking scheme ever prosecuted in the country, current and former US officials said. Many individual hacks had already been reported or mentioned in previous court filings.