Criminals exploited weak checks and old tech to pull off vast COVID benefit fraud

In life, when you encounter something momentuous—a sudden job loss, a routine check-up that revealed an illness you cant afford the medical bills for—you can be assured that the federal or state government has benefits you can apply for it. And where there are benefits, you can also be assured th...

The Kaseya Ransomware Nightmare Is Almost Over

A decryption tool has emerged, meaning any victims whose systems remain locked up can soon breathe easy...

SUSE-SU-2021:2326-1 Security update for nodejs12

This update for nodejs12 fixes the following issues: - update to 12.22.2: - CVE-2021-22918: Out of bounds read bsc1187973 - CVE-2021-23362: ssri Regular Expression Denial of Service and hosted-git-info bsc1187977 - CVE-2021-27290: Regular Expression Denial of Service bsc1187976 - CVE-2021-3450:...

Friday Squid Blogging: COVID Relief Funds

A town in Japan built a giant squid statue with its COVID relief grant. One local told the Chunichi Shimbun newspaper that while the statue may be effective in the long run, the money could have been used for "urgent support," such as for medical staff and long-term care facilities. But a...

Supporting Akamai Communities Impacted by COVID-19

While those of us in places like the U.S. are experiencing some relief with access to the COVID-19 vaccine, it has been heartbreaking to see surges in infection, hospitalization, and death across the globe, including the dire situation in India. Bengaluru is Akamai's largest office. And while the...

Cybercriminal Enterprise 'Ringleaders' Stole $55M Via COVID-19 Fraud, Romance Scams

Click to Register U.S. law enforcement arrested six “ringleaders” of a Ghana-based cybercriminal enterprise, who had allegedly launched a slew of money-stealing scams dating back to 2013 that included romance scams, business email compromise attacks and fraud. Seized in the arrests were a slew of...

Identity Theft Spikes Due to COVID-19 Relief

Cases of identity theft in the United States doubled in 2020, mainly due to cybercriminals taking advantage of people affected economically by COVID-19 who filed to receive government benefits. This is according to the Federal Trade Commission FTC, which received about 1.4 million reports of...

US COVID-19 relief bill to make copyrighted content streaming a felony

By Deeba Ahmed The $300/week unemployment legislation includes a clause that will make streaming of protected content a punishable crime. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: US COVID-19 relief bill to make copyrighted content streaming a felony...

Secret Service Investigates 700 Cases of Covid Relief Fraud

Ransomware as a service, exposed SMS photos, and more of the week's top security news...

Guide: Scale or Fail — Why MSSPs Need Multitenant Security Solutions

Managed Security Services Providers MSSPs have it rough. They have the burden of protecting their client organizations from cyberattacks, with clients from different industries, different security stacks, and different support requirements. And everything is in a constant state of flux. MSSPs are...

IRS COVID-19 Relief Payment Deadlines Anchor Convincing Phish

A credential-phishing email campaign is making the rounds, using the lure of coronavirus tax relief to scam people into giving up their personal information. The data-harvesting cybercriminals are looking to take advantage of the Internal Revenue Service IRS deadlines that are approaching for...

Malicious Cyber Actor Spoofing COVID-19 Loan Relief Webpage via Phishing Emails

Summary The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA is currently tracking an unknown malicious cyber actor who is spoofing the Small Business Administration SBA COVID-19 loan relief webpage via phishing emails. These emails include a malicious link to the spoofed SBA website that th...

SBA phishing scams: from malware to advanced social engineering

A number of threat actors continue to take advantage of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic through phishing scams and other campaigns distributing malware. In this blog, we look at 3 different phishing waves targeting applicants for Covid-19 relief loans. The phishing emails impersonate the US Smal...

CISO Stressbusters Post #3: 3 ways to share accountability for security risk management

Jim Eckart, former Chief Information Security Officer CISO of The Coca-Cola Company and current Chief Security Advisor at Microsoft shares his advice for relieving stress in today’s CISO Stressbuster post. If you are a CISO, it can feel like the responsibility for keeping the company secure rests...

Fraudulent Unemployment, COVID-19 Relief Claims Earn BEC Gang Millions

An infamous business email compromise BEC gang has submitted hundreds of fraudulent claims with state-level U.S. unemployment websites and coronavirus relief funds. Researchers who tracked the fraudulent activity said cybercriminals may have made millions so far from the fraudulent activity. Behi...

Small Businesses Tapping COVID-19 Loans Hit with Data Exposure

A data breach at the agency in charge of providing financial relief to small businesses during the COVID-19 crisis may have exposed sensitive information of 8,000 business that applied, and may delay payouts, a government official said. The Small Business Administration SBA, which oversees the...

Coronavirus ‘Financial Relief’ Phishing Attacks Spike

Researchers are warning of an upward surge in social-engineering lures in malicious emails that promise victims financial relief during the coronavirus pandemic. The slew of campaigns piggy-back on news of governments mulling financial relief packages, in response to the economic stall brought on...

Zeus Sphinx Banking Trojan Arises Amid COVID-19

The Zeus Sphinx banking trojan is back after being off the scene for nearly three years. According to researchers Amir Gandler and Limor Kessem at IBM X-Force, Sphinx a.k.a. Zloader or Terdot began resurfacing in December. However, the researchers observed a significant increase in volume in Marc...

COVID-19 relief package provides another platform for bad actors

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues to yield new subject matter that bad actors can turn into fodder for enticing victims into clicking on malicious links and attachments. On March 27, the CARES Act was signed into law by the President, enacting a wide range of stimulus packages designed to a...

Beware of Hurricane Florence Relief Scams

If you're thinking of donating money to help victims of Hurricane Florence, please do your research on the charitable entity before giving: A slew of new domains apparently related to Hurricane Florence relief efforts are now accepting donations on behalf of victims without much accountability fo...