ThreatList: Healthcare Breaches Spike in October

October experienced a 44.44 percent month-over-month increase in healthcare data breaches, resulting in 661,830 healthcare records exposed or stolen during the month. That’s according to the Health and Human Services HHS Office for Civil Rights’ monthly report reported via HIPAA Journal. The...

Austin Man Indicted for Stealing Unreleased Music from Artists

A 27-year-old man who allegedly impersonated a music producer in an effort to nab unreleased music from various artists has been indicted. If convicted, he faces 27 years in prison on charges of conspiring with others to commit wire fraud, computer intrusion and committing aggravated identity...

Hidden Cam Above Bluetooth Pump Skimmer

Tiny hidden spy cameras are a common sight at ATMs that have been tampered with by crooks who specialize in retrofitting the machines with card skimmers. But until this past week I'd never heard of hidden cameras being used at gas pumps in tandem with Bluetooth-based card skimming devices...

ID Thieves Turn to Snail Mail as Juicy Target for Financial Crimes

As it gets harder for cybercriminals to bypass business email compromise BEC defenses, some hackers are switching from email scams to real-mail cons. Researchers at Flashpoint said they are monitoring hacker forums where criminals are swapping tips on a growing ID theft and financial crime area,...

Black Friday Alert 2019: Net Shopping Bag of Threats

Every year, Kaspersky releases an annual Black Friday alert to highlight how fraudsters may capitalize on increased levels of online shopping at this time of year when many brands are offering their customers appealing discounts. In the rush to get a big discount or, even more panic-inducing, a...

Online Phishing: How to Stay Out of the Hackers’ Nets

Despite the growing popularity of social media and messaging apps, email remains the preferred way to communicate online for millions of Americans. And the bad guys know it. Of the 28.6 billion cyber-threats Trend Micro blocked globally in the first half of 2019, over 24.3 billion were carried by...

Why Were the Russians So Set Against This Hacker Being Extradited?

The Russian government has for the past four years been fighting to keep 29-year-old alleged cybercriminal Alexei Burkov from being extradited by Israel to the United States. When Israeli authorities turned down requests to send him back to Russia -- supposedly to face separate hacking charges...

October Release: Q&A with Ari Weil

Shortly after Akamai announced the October 2019 Release with new features and capabilities across its security, performance and media product lines, Akamai's VP of Product Marketing, Ari Weil, took over Akamai's Twitter account for a live October Release Q&A. For those that missed the live event,...

How Machine Learning is Changing the Face of Financial Services

Artificial intelligence AI has become integrated into our everyday lives. It powers what we see in our social media newsfeeds, activates facial recognition to unlock our smartphones, and even suggests music for us to listen to. Machine learning, a subset of AI, is progressively integrating into o...

Here are the most popular robocall scams and how to avoid them

We recently examined how robocall scams are a serious threat to privacy, alongside the astonishing rate at which their volume continues to increase. Forty-three billion calls in 2019 with an average of 131 calls per person in the US alone is not something to be sniffed at. No matter how careful y...

Details of an Airbnb Fraud

This is a fascinating article about a bait-and-switch Airbnb fraud. The article focuses on one particular group of scammers and how they operate, using the fact that Airbnb as a company doesn't do much to combat fraud on its platform. But I am more interested in how the fraudsters essentially...

A week in security (October 28 – November 3)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we celebrated the birth of the Internet 50 years ago, highlighted reports about the US Federal Trade Commission FTC filing a case against stalkerware developer Retina-X, issued a PSI on disaster donation scams, looked at the top cybersecurity challenged SMBs face,...

Global Crime Ring Bilks U.S. Military Members, Vets Out of Millions

Operators of a widespread identity-theft and fraud scheme have bilked thousands of U.S. servicemembers and veterans out of millions of dollars in stolen funds and Veterans Affairs VA benefits payments. Fredrick Brown pled guilty this week, revealing that in his role as a civilian medical records...

Joker's Stash Drops Largest-Ever Credit Card Cache on Dark Web

Joker’s Stash, a Dark Web destination that specializes in trading in payment-card data, has added 1.3 million credit and debit cards to its inventory, belonging to Indian banking customers. Researchers said it’s the largest stolen payment card cache ever put up for sale. According to Group-IB, th...

Steam-powered scammers

Digital game distribution services have not only simplified the sale of games themselves, but provided developers with additional monetization levers. For example, in-game items, such as skins, equipment, and other character-enhancing elements as well as those that help one show up, can be sold f...

How 18 Malware Apps Snuck Into Apple's App Store

Sing it loud: The App Store's not perfect. Especially when it's up against click fraud code this clever...

Cachet Financial Reeling from MyPayrollHR Fraud

When New York-based cloud payroll provider MyPayrollHR unexpectedly shuttered its doors last month and disappeared with $26 million worth of customer payroll deposits, its payment processor Cachet Financial Services ended up funding the bank accounts of MyPayrollHR client company employees anyway...

Apple Removes 17 Malicious iOS Apps From App Store

Researchers have uncovered 17 apps on Apple’s official App Store infected with malware. Apple has since removed the apps from the App Store – but a “significant” number of iOS users could have installed them, researchers said. Once downloaded, the malicious apps infect victims with a trojan...

FTC Promotes International Charity Fraud Awareness Week

The Federal Trade Commission FTC has released an article promoting International Charity Fraud Awareness Week ICFAW, which runs October 21–25. FTC, the National Association of State Charities Officials, and state and international partners coordinated this campaign to help both charities and dono...

Cybercrime Tool Prices Bump Up in Dark Web Markets

Prices have been rising in the last two years for longstanding tools available on the Dark Web to help bad actors commit cyber attacks and fraud, alongside newer innovations that are emerging to bolster crimes like ransomware and SIM swapping, new research has found. Keeping track of these trends...