October 9, 2023
This post was originally published on this site The fake USPS phishing page. Recent weeks have seen a sizable uptick in the number of phishing scams targeting U.S. Postal Service (USPS) customers. Here’s a look at an extensive SMS phishing operation that tries to steal personal and financial data by spoofing the USPS, as well as postal services in at least a dozen other countries. KrebsOnSecurity recently heard from a reader who received an SMS purporting to have been sent by the USPS, saying there was a problem with a package destined for the reader’s address. Clicking the link in […]
October 2, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteMany organizations — including quite a few Fortune 500 firms — have exposed web links that allow anyone to initiate a Zoom video conference meeting as a valid employee. These company-specific Zoom links, which include a permanent user ID number and an embedded passcode, can work indefinitely and expose an organization’s employees, customers or partners to phishing and other social engineering attacks. Image: @Pressmaster on Shutterstock. At issue is the Zoom Personal Meeting ID (PMI), which is a permanent identification number linked to your Zoom account and serves as your personal meeting room […]
September 22, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteThe password manager service LastPass is now forcing some of its users to pick longer master passwords. LastPass says the changes are needed to ensure all customers are protected by their latest security improvements. But critics say the move is little more than a public relations stunt that will do nothing to help countless early adopters whose password vaults were exposed in a 2022 breach at LastPass. LastPass sent this notification to users earlier this week. LastPass told customers this week they would be forced to update their master password if it was […]
September 18, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteThe victim shaming website operated by the cybercriminals behind 8Base — currently one of the more active ransomware groups — was until earlier today leaking quite a bit of information that the crime group probably did not intend to be made public. The leaked data suggests that at least some of website’s code was written by a 36-year-old programmer residing in the capital city of Moldova. The 8Base ransomware group’s victim shaming website on the darknet. 8Base maintains a darknet website that is only reachable via Tor, a freely available global anonymity network. […]
September 13, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteIn December 2022, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that a cybercriminal using the handle “USDoD” had infiltrated the FBI‘s vetted information sharing network InfraGard, and was selling the contact information for all 80,000 members. The FBI responded by reverifying all InfraGard members and by seizing the cybercrime forum where the data was being sold. But on Sept. 11, 2023, USDoD resurfaced after a lengthy absence to leak sensitive employee data stolen from the aerospace giant Airbus, while promising to visit the same treatment on top U.S. defense contractors. USDoD’s avatar used to be the […]
September 12, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteMicrosoft today issued software updates to fix at least five dozen security holes in Windows and supported software, including patches for two zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited. Also, Adobe, Google Chrome and Apple iOS users may have their own zero-day patching to do. On Sept. 7, researchers at Citizen Lab warned they were seeing active exploitation of a “zero-click,” zero-day flaw to install spyware on iOS devices without any interaction from the victim. “The exploit chain was capable of compromising iPhones running the latest version of iOS (16.6) without any interaction […]
September 1, 2023
This post was originally published on this site Domain names ending in “.US” — the top-level domain for the United States — are among the most prevalent in phishing scams, new research shows. This is noteworthy because .US is overseen by the U.S. government, which is frequently the target of phishing domains ending in .US. Also, .US domains are only supposed to be available to U.S. citizens and to those who can demonstrate that they have a physical presence in the United States. .US is the “country code top-level domain” or ccTLD of the United States. Dozens of countries have […]
August 29, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteThe U.S. government today announced a coordinated crackdown against QakBot, a complex malware family used by multiple cybercrime groups to lay the groundwork for ransomware infections. The international law enforcement operation involved seizing control over the botnet’s online infrastructure, and quietly removing the Qakbot malware from tens of thousands of infected Microsoft Windows computers. Dutch authorities inside a data center with servers tied to the botnet. Image: Dutch National Police. In an international operation announced today dubbed “Duck Hunt,” the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said they […]
August 25, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteSecurity consulting giant Kroll disclosed today that a SIM-swapping attack against one of its employees led to the theft of user information for multiple cryptocurrency platforms that are relying on Kroll services in their ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. And there are indications that fraudsters may already be exploiting the stolen data in phishing attacks. Cryptocurrency lender BlockFi and the now-collapsed crypto trading platform FTX each disclosed data breaches this week thanks to a recent SIM-swapping attack targeting an employee of Kroll — the company handling both firms’ bankruptcy restructuring. In a statement released today, […]
August 22, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteIn large metropolitan areas, tourists are often easy to spot because they’re far more inclined than locals to gaze upward at the surrounding skyscrapers. Security experts say this same tourist dynamic is a dead giveaway in virtually all computer intrusions that lead to devastating attacks like data theft and ransomware, and that more organizations should set simple virtual tripwires that sound the alarm when authorized users and devices are spotted exhibiting this behavior. In a blog post published last month, Cisco Talos said it was seeing a worrisome “increase in the rate of […]
August 14, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteJohn Clifton Davies, a convicted fraudster estimated to have bilked dozens of technology startups out of more than $30 million through phony investment schemes, has a brand new pair of scam companies that are busy dashing startup dreams: A fake investment firm called Equity-Invest[.]ch, and Diligere[.]co.uk, a scam due diligence company that Equity-Invest insists all investment partners use. A native of the United Kingdom, Mr. Davies absconded from justice before being convicted on multiple counts of fraud in 2015. Prior to his conviction, Davies served 16 months in jail before being cleared on […]
August 8, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteMicrosoft Corp. today issued software updates to plug more than 70 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related products, including multiple zero-day vulnerabilities currently being exploited in the wild. Six of the flaws fixed today earned Microsoft’s “critical” rating, meaning malware or miscreants could use them to install software on a vulnerable Windows system without any help from users. Last month, Microsoft acknowledged a series of zero-day vulnerabilities in a variety of Microsoft products that were discovered and exploited in-the-wild attacks. They were assigned a single placeholder designation of CVE-2023-36884. Satnam […]
August 4, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteOne frustrating aspect of email phishing is the frequency with which scammers fall back on tried-and-true methods that really have no business working these days. Like attaching a phishing email to a traditional, clean email message, or leveraging link redirects on LinkedIn, or abusing an encoding method that makes it easy to disguise booby-trapped Microsoft Windows files as relatively harmless documents. KrebsOnSecurity recently heard from a reader who was puzzled over an email he’d just received saying he needed to review and complete a supplied W-9 tax form. The missive was made to […]
August 3, 2023
This post was originally published on this site Researchers say mobile malware purveyors have been abusing a bug in the Google Android platform that lets them sneak malicious code into benign mobile apps and evade security scanning tools. Google says it has updated its app malware detection mechanisms in response to the new research. At issue is a mobile malware obfuscation method identified by researchers at ThreatFabric, a security firm based in Amsterdam. Aleksandr Eremin, a senior malware analyst at the company, told KrebsOnSecurity they recently encountered a number of mobile banking trojans abusing a bug present in all Android […]
July 26, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteThe Russian government today handed down a treason conviction and 14-year prison sentence on Iyla Sachkov, the former founder and CEO of one of Russia’s largest cybersecurity firms. Sachkov, 37, has been detained for nearly two years under charges that the Kremlin has kept classified and hidden from public view, and he joins a growing roster of former Russian cybercrime fighters who are now serving hard time for farcical treason convictions. Ilya Sachkov. Image: Group-IB.com. In 2003, Sachkov founded Group-IB, a cybersecurity and digital forensics company that quickly earned a reputation for exposing […]
July 25, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteResearchers this month uncovered a two-year-old Linux-based remote access trojan dubbed AVrecon that enslaves Internet routers into botnet that bilks online advertisers and performs password-spraying attacks. Now new findings reveal that AVrecon is the malware engine behind a 12-year-old service called SocksEscort, which rents hacked residential and small business devices to cybercriminals looking to hide their true location online. Image: Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs. In a report released July 12, researchers at Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs called the AVrecon botnet “one of the largest botnets targeting small-office/home-office (SOHO) routers seen in recent history,” […]
July 21, 2023
This post was originally published on this siteMany things have changed since 2018, such as the names of the companies in the Fortune 100 list. But one aspect of that vaunted list that hasn’t shifted much since is that very few of these companies list any security professionals within their top executive ranks. The next time you receive a breach notification letter that invariably says a company you trusted places a top priority on customer security and privacy, consider this: Only four of the Fortune 100 companies currently list a security professional in the executive leadership pages of their websites. […]
July 18, 2023
This post was originally published on this site[This is Part III in a series on research conducted for a recent Hulu documentary on the 2015 hack of marital infidelity website AshleyMadison.com.] In 2019, a Canadian company called Defiant Tech Inc. pleaded guilty to running LeakedSource[.]com, a service that sold access to billions of passwords and other data exposed in countless data breaches. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that the owner of Defiant Tech, a 32-year-old Ontario man named Jordan Evan Bloom, was hired in late 2014 as a developer for the marital infidelity site AshleyMadison.com. Bloom resigned from AshleyMadison citing health reasons […]
July 13, 2023
This post was originally published on this site[This is Part II of a story published here last week on reporting that went into a new Hulu documentary series on the 2015 Ashley Madison hack.] It was around 9 p.m. on Sunday, July 19, when I received a message through the contact form on KrebsOnSecurity.com that the marital infidelity website AshleyMadison.com had been hacked. The message contained links to confidential Ashley Madison documents, and included a manifesto that said a hacker group calling itself the Impact Team was prepared to leak data on all 37 million users unless Ashley Madison and […]