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A week in security (September 1 – September 7)
Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Nexar dashcam video database hacked Roblox introduces age checks to use communication features Give your PC a fresh start: New free tools to boost your PC’s speed, security, and peace of mind TP-Link warns of botnet infecting routers and targeting Microsoft 365...
Tax refund scam targets Californians
The State of California Franchise Tax Board FTB recently issued a warning to taxpayers to protect themselves from tax scams. In their warning the FTB states: “Recently, the FTB received reports of a scam targeting taxpayers through text messages that appear to be from FTB. These text messages...
Spam and phishing in 2023
The year in figures 45.60% of all email sent worldwide and 46.59% of all email sent in the Runet the Russian web segment was spam 31.45% of all spam email was sent from Russia Kaspersky Mail Anti-Virus blocked 135,980,457 malicious email attachments Our Anti-Phishing system thwarted 709,590,011...
Tax refund phish logs keystrokes to swipe personal details
Theres been some smart phishing campaigns running over the last few weeks, and this one is particularly sneaky. Bleeping Computer reports that a phishing page is targeting Greek taxpayers with a tax refund scam. The added sting in the tail comes in the form of an embedded keylogger which grabs...
Watch out for this SMS phish promising a tax refund
Imagine logging into your bank’s website after responding to a text message claiming you’re due a refund, only to see a warning to watch out for bogus texts: Beware of SMS phishing! For those who dont read Dutch, the warning reads: Never respond to unusual emails or texts! Fraudsters often send...
Annoyingly Believable Tax Refund Scam Targets Mobile
A text message-based tax scam is making the rounds in the U.K., in a probable harbinger of things to come as the U.S. tax season gets underway in earnest. SMS messages are going out to unsuspecting U.K. citizens claiming to be from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs HMRC, the country’s...
IRS to Make ID Protection PIN Open to All
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service IRS said this week that beginning in 2021 it will allow all taxpayers to apply for an identity protection personal identification number IP PIN, a single-use code designed to block identity thieves from falsely claiming a tax refund in your name. Currently, IP PI...
Confessions of an ID Theft Kingpin, Part II
Yesterdays piece told the tale of Hieu Minh Ngo, a hacker the U.S. Secret Service described as someone who caused more material financial harm to more Americans than any other convicted cybercriminal. Ngo was recently deported back to his home country after serving more than seven years in prison...
FEMA IT Specialist Charged in ID Theft, Tax Refund Fraud Conspiracy
An information technology specialist at the Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA was arrested this week on suspicion of hacking into the human resource databases of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center UPMC in 2014, stealing personal data on more than 65,000 UPMC employees, and selling the...
New IRS Site Could Make it Easy for Thieves to Intercept Some Stimulus Payments
The U.S. federal government is now in the process of sending Economic Impact Payments by direct deposit to millions of Americans. Most who are eligible for payments can expect to have funds direct-deposited into the same bank accounts listed on previous years' tax filings sometime next week. Toda...
IRS Emails Promise a Refund But Deliver Botnet Recruitment
U.S. taxpayers are being offered fake refunds in the latest wave of phishing emails, which ultimately deliver an payload that adds the target machine to the multifunctional Amadey botnet. Amadey is a relatively new botnet, first noted late in Q1 of 2019, according to Milo Salvia, security...
Deleted Facebook Cybercrime Groups Had 300,000 Members
Hours after being alerted by KrebsOnSecurity, Facebook last week deleted almost 120 private discussion groups totaling more than 300,000 members who flagrantly promoted a host of illicit activities on the social media network's platform. The scam groups facilitated a broad spectrum of shady...
San Diego Sues Experian Over ID Theft Service
The City of San Diego, Calif. is suing consumer credit bureau Experian, alleging that a data breach first reported by KrebsOnSecurity in 2013 affected more than a quarter-million people in San Diego but that Experian never alerted affected consumers as required under California law. The lawsuit,...
Tax refund, or How to lose your remaining cash
Every year, vast numbers of people around the globe relish the delightful prospect of filling out tax returns, applying for tax refunds, etc. Given that tax authorities and their taxpayers are moving online, it's no surprise to find cybercriminals hard on their heels. By spoofing trusted governme...
IRS Scam Leverages Hacked Tax Preparers, Client Bank Accounts
Identity thieves who specialize in tax refund fraud have been busy of late hacking online accounts at multiple tax preparation firms, using them to file phony refund requests. Once the Internal Revenue Service processes the return and deposits money into bank accounts of the hacked firms' clients...
File Your Taxes Before Scammers Do It For You
Today, Jan. 29, is officially the first day of the 2018 tax-filing season, also known as the day fraudsters start requesting phony tax refunds in the names of identity theft victims. Want to minimize the chances of getting hit by tax refund fraud this year? File your taxes before the bad guys can...
Equifax Breach: Setting the Record Straight
Bloomberg published a story this week citing three unnamed sources who told the publication that Equifax experienced a breach earlier this year which predated the intrusion that the big-three credit bureau announced on Sept. 7. To be clear, this earlier breach at Equifax is not a new finding and...
Private Eye Allegedly Used Leaky Goverment Tool in Bid to Find Tax Data on Trump
In March 2017, KrebsOnSecurity warned that thieves who perpetrate tax refund fraud with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service were leveraging a widely-used online student loan tool to find critical data on consumers that allows them to claim huge refunds with the IRS in someone else's name. This week...
Threat Outbreak Alert RuleID28539: Email Messages Distributing Malicious Software on March 29, 2017
Medium Alert ID: 53221 First Published: 2017 March 29 19:40 GMT Version: 1 Summary Cisco Security has detected significant activity related to spam email messages distributing malicious software. Email messages that are related to this threat RuleID28539 may contain the following files: Name | Si...
Tax-themed phishing and malware attacks proliferate during the tax filing season
Tax-themed scams and social engineering attacks are as certain as death or tax itself. Every year we see these attacks, and 2017 is no different. These attacks circulate year-round as cybercriminals take advantage of the different country and region tax schedules, but they peak in the months...