US Indicts Two Chinese Government Hackers Over Global Hacking Campaign

The US Department of Justice on Thursday charged two Chinese hackers associated with the Chinese government for hacking numerous companies and government agencies in a dozen countries. The Chinese nationals, Zhu Hua known online as Afwar, CVNX, Alayos and Godkiller and Zhang Shilong known online ...

Save the Children Federation Duped in $1M Scam

Hackers scammed the Save the Children Federation out of almost $1 million in a business email compromise BEC scam. Save the Children is a well-known U.S.-based non-profit group that offers charity services like fundraising and sponsorships. According to the company’s 2017 income tax returns,...

Fake Bomb Threat Emails Demanding Bitcoins Sparked Chaos Across US, Canada

"Pay $20,000 worth of bitcoin, or a bomb will detonate in your building" A massive number of businesses, schools, government offices and individuals across the US, New Zealand and Canada on Thursday received bomb threats via emails that caused nationwide chaos, forcing widespread evacuations and...

Secure Critical Infrastructure Top of Mind for U.S.

When it comes to cyber-threats and defense, the U.S. government says that critical infrastructure threats are a growing concern. Rob Joyce, senior advisor of cybersecurity strategy for the National Security Agency NSA, said that while attacks targeting the systems that power the manufacturing,...

Bomb Threats Emailed Around the World

The National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center NCCIC, part of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA, is aware of a worldwide email campaign targeting businesses and organizations with bomb threats. The emails claim that a device will detonate unless a ransom ...

A week in security (November 26 – December 2)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we took a look at our cybersecurity predictions for 2019, we explained why Malwarebytes participated in AV testing and how we took part in an joint take down of massive ad fraud botnets, warned that ESTA registration websites still lurk in paid ads on Google,...

SamSam Ransomware

Summary The Department of Homeland Security DHS National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center NCCIC and the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI are issuing this activity alert to inform computer network defenders about SamSam ransomware, also known as MSIL/Samas.A. Specifically, th...

SamSam Ransomware

The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have identified cyber threat actors using SamSam ransomware—also known as MSIL/SAMAS.A—to target industries in the United States and worldwide. NCCIC encourages users and administrators to review Alert AA18-337A: SamSam...

FBI Takes Down a Massive Advertising Fraud Ring

The FBI announced that it dismantled a large Internet advertising fraud network, and arrested eight people: A 13-count indictment was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging Aleksandr Zhukov, Boris Timokhin, Mikhail Andreev, Denis Avdeev, Dmitry Novikov, Sergey Ovsyannikov, Aleksandr...

FBI Sinkholes $38M Global Ad Fraud Operation

The FBI has taken control of 31 web domains in a widespread takedown of a multi-year, global ad fraud campaign, believed to have stolen at least $38 million, partly via a botnet strategy. In addition, eight defendants face a 13-count indictment from a federal court in Brooklyn in the case. The...

U.S Charges Two Iranian Hackers for SamSam Ransomware Attacks

The Department of Justice announced Wednesday charges against two Iranian nationals for their involvement in creating and deploying the notorious SamSam ransomware. The alleged hackers, Faramarz Shahi Savandi, 34, and Mohammad Mehdi Shah, 27, have been charged on several counts of computer hackin...

FBI & Google shut down largest-ever Ad fraud scheme ‘3VE’

By Waqas 8 suspects behind 3VE have also been identified. Last year in August, the Federal Bureau of Investigation organized a secret meet-up between cybersecurity and digital advertising experts in its Manhattan federal building. This included Google and nearly 20 tech firms while there were...

FBI Shuts Down Multimillion Dollar – 3ve – Ad Fraud Operation

Google, the FBI, ad-fraud fighting company WhiteOps and a collection of cyber security companies worked together to shut down one of the largest and most sophisticated digital ad-fraud schemes that infected over 1.7 million computers to generate fake clicks used to defraud online advertisers for...

The PCLOB Needs a Director

The US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is looking for a director. Among other things, this board has some oversight role over the NSA. More precisely, it can examine what any executive-branch agency is doing about counterterrorism. So it can examine the program of TSA watchlists, NSA...

Holiday Scams and Malware Campaigns

As the holidays approach, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA reminds users to be aware of seasonal scams and malware campaigns. Users should be cautious of unsolicited emails that contain malicious links or attachments with malware, advertisements infected with malware, and...

Calif. Man Pleads Guilty in Fatal Swatting Case, Faces 20+ Years in Prison

A California man who pleaded guilty Tuesday to causing dozens of swatting attacks -- including a deadly incident in Kansas last year -- now faces 20 or more years in prison. Tyler Raj Barriss, in an undated selfie. Tyler Barriss, 25, went by the nickname SWAuTistic on Twitter, and reveled in...

Sextortion emails: They’re probably not watching you

Back in July, Krebs on Security reported on a rather novel scam, where the threat actor would use credentials from old data dumps to suggest that they had directly hacked the victim and obtained the victim's presumably sensitive browser history. Stolen credentials aside, sex-based extortion scams...

LuminosityLink Hacking Tool Author Gets 30-Months Prison Sentence

A 21-year-old Kentucky man who previously pleaded guilty to developing, marketing, and selling an infamous remote access trojan RAT called LuminosityLink has now been sentenced to 30 months in prison. According to a press release published Monday by U.S. Attorney's Office, Colton Grubbs, who used...

FBI Releases Article on Defending Against Payroll Phishing Scams

The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI has released an article on building a digital defense against phishing scams targeting electronically deposited paychecks. In these schemes, scammers use phishing emails to direct employees to fraudulent websites and collect their work credentials. Scammers...

30 Million Facebook Accounts Were Hacked: Check If You're One of Them

Late last month Facebook announced its worst-ever security breach that allowed an unknown group of hackers to steal secret access tokens for millions of accounts by taking advantage of a flaw in the 'View As' feature. At the time of the initial disclosure, Facebook estimated that the number of...