Allison Nixon – Page 3 – Network Securitas

January 24, 2018

Expert: IoT Botnets the Work of a ‘Vast Minority’

This post was originally published on this siteIn December 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice announced indictments and guilty pleas by three men in the United States responsible for creating and using Mirai, a malware strain that enslaves poorly-secured “Internet of Things” or IoT devices like security cameras and digital video recorders for use in large-scale cyberattacks. The FBI and the DOJ had help in their investigation from many security experts, but this post focuses on one expert whose research into the Dark Web and its various malefactors was especially useful in that case. Allison Nixon is director of security […]

August 16, 2018

Hanging Up on Mobile in the Name of Security

This post was originally published on this siteAn entrepreneur and virtual currency investor is suing AT&T for $224 million, claiming the wireless provider was negligent when it failed to prevent thieves from hijacking his mobile account and stealing millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies. Increasingly frequent, high-profile attacks like these are prompting some experts to say the surest way to safeguard one’s online accounts may be to disconnect them from the mobile providers entirely. The claims come in a lawsuit filed this week in Los Angeles on behalf of Michael Terpin, who co-founded the first angel investor group for bitcoin enthusiasts in […]

March 17, 2019

Why Phone Numbers Stink As Identity Proof

This post was originally published on this sitePhone numbers stink for security and authentication. They stink because most of us have so much invested in these digits that they’ve become de facto identities. At the same time, when you lose control over a phone number — maybe it’s hijacked by fraudsters, you got separated or divorced, or you were way late on your phone bill payments — whoever inherits that number can then be you in a lot of places online. How exactly did we get to the point where a single, semi-public and occasionally transient data point like a […]

October 15, 2019

“BriansClub” Hack Rescues 26M Stolen Cards

This post was originally published on this site“BriansClub,” one of the largest underground stores for buying stolen credit card data, has itself been hacked. The data stolen from BriansClub encompasses more than 26 million credit and debit card records taken from hacked online and brick-and-mortar retailers over the past four years, including almost eight million records uploaded to the shop in 2019 alone. An ad for BriansClub has been using my name and likeness for years to peddle millions of stolen credit cards. Last month, KrebsOnSecurity was contacted by a source who shared a plain text file containing what was […]