Unit 221B – Network Securitas

June 13, 2020

Privnotes.com Is Phishing Bitcoin from Users of Private Messaging Service Privnote.com

This post was originally published on this siteFor the past year, a site called Privnotes.com has been impersonating Privnote.com, a legitimate, free service that offers private, encrypted messages which self-destruct automatically after they are read. Until recently, I couldn’t quite work out what Privnotes was up to, but today it became crystal clear: Any messages containing bitcoin addresses will be automatically altered to include a different bitcoin address, as long as the Internet addresses of the sender and receiver of the message are not the same. Earlier this year, KrebsOnSecurity heard from the owners of Privnote.com, who complained that someone […]

July 22, 2020

Twitter Hacking for Profit and the LoLs

This post was originally published on this siteThe New York Times last week ran an interview with several young men who claimed to have had direct contact with those involved in last week’s epic hack against Twitter. These individuals said they were only customers of the person who had access to Twitter’s internal employee tools, and were not responsible for the actual intrusion or bitcoin scams that took place that day. But new information suggests that at least two of them operated a service that resold access to Twitter employees for the purposes of modifying or seizing control of prized […]

August 19, 2020

Voice Phishers Targeting Corporate VPNs

This post was originally published on this siteThe COVID-19 epidemic has brought a wave of email phishing attacks that try to trick work-at-home employees into giving away credentials needed to remotely access their employers’ networks. But one increasingly brazen group of crooks is taking your standard phishing attack to the next level, marketing a voice phishing service that uses a combination of one-on-one phone calls and custom phishing sites to steal VPN credentials from employees. According to interviews with several sources, this hybrid phishing gang has a remarkably high success rate, and operates primarily through paid requests or “bounties,” where […]

March 29, 2022

Hackers Gaining Power of Subpoena Via Fake “Emergency Data Requests”

This post was originally published on this siteThere is a terrifying and highly effective “method” that criminal hackers are now using to harvest sensitive customer data from Internet service providers, phone companies and social media firms. It involves compromising email accounts and websites tied to police departments and government agencies, and then sending unauthorized demands for subscriber data while claiming the information being requested can’t wait for a court order because it relates to an urgent matter of life and death. In the United States, when federal, state or local law enforcement agencies wish to obtain information about who owns […]