Rapture, a Ransomware Family With Similarities to Paradise

In March and April 2023, we observed a type of ransomware targeting its victims via a minimalistic approach with tools that leave only a minimal footprint behind. Our findings revealed many of the preparations made by the perpetrators and how quickly they managed to carry out the ransomware attac...

Hackers fool major tech companies into handing over data of women and minors to abuse

Some major tech companies have unwittingly opened harassment and exploitation opportunities to the women and children who they have pledged to protect. This happened because they provided information in response to emergency data requests from legitimate law enforcement accounts that hackers had...

Spyware Blitzes Compromise, Cannibalize ICS Networks

Attackers are targeting industrial enterprises with spyware campaigns that hunt for corporate credentials so they can be used both for financial gain and to cannibalize compromised networks to propagate future attacks, researchers have found. The campaigns use off-the-shelf spyware but are unique...

Identifying and Arresting Ransomware Criminals

The Wall Street Journal has a story about how two people were identified as the perpetrators of a ransomware scheme. They were found because -- as generally happens -- they made mistakes covering their tracks. They were investigated because they had the bad luck of locking up Washington, DC's vid...

IC3 Releases Alert on Web Site Defacements

The Internet Crime Complaint Center IC3 has issued an alert addressing recently perpetrated Web site defacements. The defacements advertise themselves as associated with the Islamic State in the Levant ISIL a.k.a. Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams ISIS. However, FBI assesses that the perpetrator...

FTC Asking DEF CON to Help Catch Robocallers

The United States Federal Trade Commission is sick and tired of illegal robocalling, and it’s hosting a contest this year at the DEF CON hacker conference in Las Vegas in an attempt to do something about it. The consumer protection agency’s weariness likely stems from the more than 150,000...

Data Breaches for All

Sony’s online gaming platform, The PlayStation Network PSN, disappeared for more than a month starting in April, and no amount of double X and O-ing or right joysticking could save it. The reason? A massive attack on PSN’s network knocked the gaming giant offline and exposed the data of more than...

Netherlands-based Rabobank down under DDoS attack !

Netherlands-based Rabobank down under DDoS attack ! The internet and mobile banking services of Netherlands-based Rabobank were crippled by a distributed denial of service attack yesterday. The attack sent the banking services offline but did not affect Australian operations, according to the ban...

Online crime complaints hit record high in 2008

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center IC3 says complaints of online crime hit a record high in 2008, driven mostly by non-delivery of goods and service and those pesky 419 Nigerian e-mail scams. Accordign to a new report PDF from ic3.gov, the center received a a total of 275,284 complaints, a...