Two Arrested for Stealing $550,000 in Cryptocurrency Using Sim Swapping

It appears that at least the United States has started taking the threat of Sim Swapping attacks very seriously. Starting with the country's first-ever conviction for 'SIM Swapping' this February, U.S. Department of Justice has since then announced charges against several individuals for involvin...

Russia Fails to Stop Alleged Hacker From Facing US Charges

The repercussions over custody and extradition of Aleksei Burkov have set off a geopolitical maelstrom...

Orcus RAT Author Charged in Malware Scheme

In July 2016, KrebsOnSecurity published a story identifying a Toronto man as the author of the Orcus RAT, a software product that’s been marketed on underground forums and used in countless malware attacks since its creation in 2015. This week, Canadian authorities criminally charged him with...

Feds Allege Adconion Employees Hijacked IP Addresses for Spamming

Federal prosecutors in California have filed criminal charges against four employees of Adconion Direct, an email advertising firm, alleging they unlawfully hijacked vast swaths of Internet addresses and used them in large-scale spam campaigns. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that the charges are...

Epic Games Hit With Class Action Lawsuit Over Hacked 'Fortnite' Accounts

Epic Games, the creator of the popular 'Fortnite' video game, is facing a class-action lawsuit from gamers over hacked Fortnite accounts, accusing the company of failing to maintain adequate security measures and notify users of the security breach in a timely manner. The lawsuit, filed by...

The Danger in Assange’s Charges, a Memory Experiment, and More News

Catch up on the most important news from today in two minutes or less...

A Tough Week for IP Address Scammers

In the early days of the Internet, there was a period when Internet Protocol version 4 IPv4 addresses e.g. 4.4.4.4 were given out like cotton candy to anyone who asked. But these days companies are queuing up to obtain new IP space from the various regional registries that periodically dole out t...

U.S. Charges 9 'SIM Swapping' Attackers For Stealing $2.5 Million

The U.S. Department of Justice today announced charges against nine individuals, 6 of which are members of a hacking group called "The Community" and other 3 are former employees of mobile phone providers who allegedly helped them steal roughly $2.5 million worth of the cryptocurrency using a...

U.S. Charges Chinese Hacker For 2015 Anthem Data Breach

The United States Justice Department today announced charges against a Chinese hacker and his hacking team member for their alleged role in the 2015 massive data breach at health insurance giant Anthem and three other unnamed American companies. Fujie Wang 王 福 杰 and another hacker named John Doe...

A week in security (February 25 – March 3)

Last week, we delved into the realm of K-12 schools and security, explored the world of compromised websites and Golang bruteforcers, and examined the possible realms of pay for privacy. We also looked at identity management solutions, Google’s Universal Read Gadget, and did the deepest of dives...

Former Russian Cybersecurity Chief Sentenced to 22 Years in Prison

A Russian court has handed down lengthy prison terms for two men convicted on treason charges for allegedly sharing information about Russian cybercriminals with U.S. law enforcement officials. The men -- a former Russian cyber intelligence official and an executive at Russian security firm...

Pre-Installed Android App Impacts Millions with Slew of Malicious Activity

A pre-installed Android application on Alcatel smartphones has been found surreptitiously siphoning off geolocation data, email addresses and phone identification numbers and sending the data to a server in China. Analysts with Upstream’s Secure-D platform said that the app, Weather Forecast—Worl...

FBI Denies Service to 15 DDoS-for-Hire Sites, Charges Operators

The Justice Department has taken 15 internet domains associated with DDoS-for-hire services offline, and has filed charges against three defendants who allegedly ran them. DDoS for hire or DDoS-as-a-service operations make it simple for any layperson to carry out DDoS attacks, flooding targets wi...

Julian Assange Charges, Japan's Top Cybersecurity Official, and More Security News This Week

Safer browsing, more bitcoin scams, and the rest of the week's top security news...

Secret Charges Against Julian Assange Revealed Due to "Cut-Paste" Error

Has Wikileaks founder Julian Assange officially been charged with any unspecified criminal offense in the United States? — YES United States prosecutors have accidentally revealed the existence of criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a recently unsealed court filing in an...

Secret Charges Against Julian Assange Revealed Due to "Cut-Paste" Error

Has Wikileaks founder Julian Assange officially been charged with any unspecified criminal offense in the United States? — YES United States prosecutors have accidentally revealed the existence of criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a recently unsealed court filing in an...

'DerpTroll' Faces 10 Years in Prison for DDoSing Gaming Sites as a Teen

After a short but disruptive career knocking popular online gaming sites offline for sport, Austin Thompson, a.k.a. “DerpTroll,” has pleaded guilty to hacking charges. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years prison and a $250,000 fine. Thompson, a 23-year-old Utah resident, made his plea on Tuesda...

U.S. Secret Service Warns ID Thieves are Abusing USPS’s Mail Scanning Service

A year ago, KrebsOnSecurity warned that "Informed Delivery," a new offering from the U.S. Postal Service USPS that lets residents view scanned images of all incoming mail, was likely to be abused by identity thieves and other fraudsters unless the USPS beefed up security around the program and ma...

Accused CIA Leaker Faces New Charges of Leaking Information From Prison

Joshua Adam Schulte , a 30-year-old former CIA computer programmer who was indicted over four months ago for masterminding the largest leak of classified information in the agency's history, has now been issued three new charges. The news comes just hours after Schulte wrote a letter to the feder...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Falsely Labeled as Octopus

Two New Yorkers have been charged with importing squid from Peru and then reselling it as octopus. Yet another problem that a blockchain-enabled supply-chain system won't solve. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered. Read ...