Kansas Man Killed In ‘SWATting’ Attack

A 28-year-old Kansas man was shot and killed by police officers on the evening of Dec. 28 after someone fraudulently reported a hostage situation ongoing at his home. The false report was the latest in a dangerous hoax known as "swatting," wherein the perpetrator falsely reports a dangerous...

New Bill Seeks Basic IoT Security Standards

Lawmakers in the U.S. Senate today introduced a bill that would set baseline security standards for the government's purchase and use of a broad range of Internet-connected devices, including computers, routers and security cameras. The legislation, which also seeks to remedy some widely-perceive...

Fulton County, Security Experts Call LockBit’s Bluff

The ransomware group LockBit told officials with Fulton County, Ga. they could expect to see their internal documents published online this morning unless the county paid a ransom demand. LockBit removed Fulton Countys listing from its victim shaming website this morning, claiming the county had...

DEA Investigating Breach of Law Enforcement Data Portal

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration DEA says it is investigating reports that hackers gained unauthorized access to an agency portal that taps into 16 different federal law enforcement databases. KrebsOnSecurity has learned the alleged compromise is tied to a cybercrime and online harassment...

What Happened to Facebook, Instagram, & WhatsApp?

Facebook and its sister properties Instagram and WhatsApp are suffering from ongoing, global outages. We dont yet know why this happened, but the how is clear: Earlier this morning, something inside Facebook caused the company to revoke key digital records that tell computers and other...

Account Hijacking Site OGUsers Hacked, Again

For at least the third time in its existence, OGUsers -- a forum overrun with people looking to buy, sell and trade access to compromised social media accounts -- has been hacked. An offer by the apparent hackers of OGUsers, offering to remove account information from the eventual database leak i...

Report: ATM Skimmer Gang Had Protection from Mexican Attorney General’s Office

A group of Romanians operating an ATM company in Mexico and suspected of bribing technicians to install sophisticated Bluetooth-based skimmers in cash machines throughout several top Mexican tourist destinations have enjoyed legal protection from a top anti-corruption official in the Mexican...

‘War Dialing’ Tool Exposes Zoom’s Password Problems

As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to force people to work from home, countless companies are now holding daily meetings using videoconferencing services from Zoom. But without the protection of a password, there's a decent chance your next Zoom meeting could be "Zoom bombed" -- attended or...

Ransomware Gangs Now Outing Victim Businesses That Don’t Pay Up

As if the scourge of ransomware wasn't bad enough already: Several prominent purveyors of ransomware have signaled they plan to start publishing data stolen from victims who refuse to pay up. To make matters worse, one ransomware gang has now created a public Web site identifying recent victim...

Twitter Bots Use Likes, RTs for Intimidation

I awoke this morning to find my account on Twitter @briankrebs had attracted almost 12,000 new followers overnight. Then I noticed I'd gained almost as many followers as the number of re-tweets RTs earned for a tweet I published on Tuesday. The tweet stated how every time I tweet something relate...

Who is the GovRAT Author and Mirai Botmaster ‘Bestbuy’?

In February 2017, authorities in the United Kingdom arrested a 29-year-old U.K. man on suspicion of knocking more than 900,000 Germans offline in an attack tied to Mirai, a malware strain that enslaves Internet of Things IoT devices like security cameras and Internet routers for use in large-scal...

Microsoft Issues WanaCrypt Patch for Windows 8, XP

Microsoft Corp. today took the unusual step of issuing security updates to address flaws in older, unsupported versions of Windows -- including Windows XP and Windows 8. The move is a bid to slow the spread of the WanaCrypt ransomware strain that infected tens of thousands of Windows computers...

CEO of Data Privacy Company Onerep.com Founded Dozens of People-Search Firms

The data privacy company Onerep.com bills itself as a Virginia-based service for helping people remove their personal information from almost 200 people-search websites. However, an investigation into the history of onerep.com finds this company is operating out of Belarus and Cyprus, and that it...

Arrest in ‘Ransom Your Employer’ Email Scheme

In August, KrebsOnSecurity warned that scammers were contacting people and asking them to unleash ransomware inside their employers network, in exchange for a percentage of any ransom amount paid by the victim company. This week, authorities in Nigeria arrested a suspect in connection with the...

RedTorch Formed from Ashes of Norse Corp.

Remember Norse Corp., the company behind the interactive "pew-pew" cyber attack map shown in the image below? Norse imploded rather suddenly in 2016 following a series of managerial missteps and funding debacles. Now, the founders of Norse have launched a new company with a somewhat different...

Mexican Politician Removed Over Alleged Ties to Romanian ATM Skimmer Gang

The leader of Mexicos Green Party has been removed from office following allegations that he received money from a Romanian ATM skimmer gang that stole hundreds of millions of dollars from tourists visiting Mexicos top tourist destinations over the past five years. The scandal is the latest fallo...

U.S. Indicts North Korean Hackers in Theft of $200 Million

The U.S. Justice Department today unsealed indictments against three men accused of working with the North Korean regime to carry out some of the most damaging cybercrime attacks over the past decade, including the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures, the global WannaCry ransomware contagion of 2017, and...

Who’s Behind Wednesday’s Epic Twitter Hack?

Twitter was thrown into chaos on Wednesday after accounts for some of the world's most recognizable public figures, executives and celebrities starting tweeting out links to bitcoin scams. Twitter says the attack happened because someone tricked or coerced an employee into providing access to...

Meant to Combat ID Theft, Unemployment Benefits Letter Prompts ID Theft Worries

Millions of Americans now filing for unemployment will receive benefits via a prepaid card issued by U.S. Bank, a Minnesota-based financial institution that handles unemployment payments for more than a dozen U.S. states. Some of these unemployment applications will trigger an automatic letter fr...

Crafty Web Skimming Domain Spoofs “https”

Earlier today, KrebsOnSecurity alerted the 10th largest food distributor in the United States that one of its Web sites had been hacked and retrofitted with code that steals credit card and login data. While such Web site card skimming attacks are not new, this intrusion leveraged a sneaky new...

When Identity Thieves Hack Your Accountant

The Internal Revenue Service has been urging tax preparation firms to step up their cybersecurity efforts this year, warning that identity thieves and hackers increasingly are targeting certified public accountants CPAs in a bid to siphon oodles of sensitive personal and financial data on...

USPS Finally Starts Notifying You by Mail If Someone is Scanning Your Snail Mail Online

In October 2017, KrebsOnSecurity warned that ne'er-do-wells could take advantage of a relatively new service offered by the U.S. Postal Service that provides scanned images of all incoming mail before it is slated to arrive at its destination address. We advised that stalkers or scammers could...

R.I.P. root9B? We Hardly Knew Ya!

root9B Holdings, a company that many in the security industry consider little more than a big-name startup aimed at cashing in on the stock market's insatiable appetite for cybersecurity firms, surprised no one this week when it announced it was ceasing operations at the end of the year. Founded ...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, November 2024 Edition

Microsoft today released updates to plug at least 89 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software. November's patch batch includes fixes for two zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited by attackers, as well as two other flaws that were publicly disclosed...

CISA Order Highlights Persistent Risk at Network Edge

The U.S. government agency in charge of improving the nations cybersecurity posture is ordering all federal agencies to take new measures to restrict access to Internet-exposed networking equipment. The directive comes amid a surge in attacks targeting previously unknown vulnerabilities in widely...

Who Is the Network Access Broker ‘Babam’?

Rarely do cybercriminal gangs that deploy ransomware gain the initial access to the target themselves. More commonly, that access is purchased from a cybercriminal broker who specializes in acquiring remote access credentials -- such as usernames and passwords needed to remotely connect to the...

Phishing Sites Targeting Scammers and Thieves

I was preparing to knock off work for the week on a recent Friday evening when a curious and annoying email came in via the contact form on this site: "Hello I go by the username Nuclear27 on your site Briansclub.com," wrote "Mitch," confusing me with the proprietor of perhaps the undergrounds...

U.K. Arrest in ‘SMS Bandits’ Phishing Service

Authorities in the United Kingdom have arrested a 20-year-old man for allegedly operating an online service for sending high-volume phishing campaigns via mobile text messages. The service, marketed in the underground under the name "SMS Bandits," has been responsible for blasting out huge volume...

Amid an Embarrassment of Riches, Ransom Gangs Increasingly Outsource Their Work

Theres an old adage in information security: "Every company gets penetration tested, whether or not they pay someone for the pleasure." Many organizations that do hire professionals to test their network security posture unfortunately tend to focus on fixing vulnerabilities hackers could use to...

The Hidden Cost of Ransomware: Wholesale Password Theft

Organizations in the throes of cleaning up after a ransomware outbreak typically will change passwords for all user accounts that have access to any email systems, servers and desktop workstations within their network. But all too often, ransomware victims fail to grasp that the crooks behind the...

Man Who Hired Deadly Swatting Gets 15 Months

An Ohio teen who recruited a convicted serial "swatter" to fake a distress call that ended in the police shooting an innocent Kansas man in 2017 has been sentenced to 15 months in prison. Image: FBI.gov "Swatting" is a dangerous hoax that involves making false claims to emergency responders about...

The Unsexy Threat to Election Security

Much has been written about the need to further secure our elections, from ensuring the integrity of voting machines to combating fake news. But according to a report quietly issued by a California grand jury this week, more attention needs to be paid to securing social media and email accounts...

That Domain You Forgot to Renew? Yeah, it’s Now Stealing Credit Cards

If you own a domain name that gets decent traffic and you fail to pay its annual renewal fee, chances are this mistake will be costly for you and for others. Lately, neglected domains have been getting scooped up by crooks who use them to set up fake e-commerce sites that steal credit card detail...

Don’t Give Away Historic Details About Yourself

Social media sites are littered with seemingly innocuous little quizzes, games and surveys urging people to reminisce about specific topics, such as "What was your first job," or "What was your first car?" The problem with participating in these informal surveys is that in doing so you may be...

Alleged vDOS Operators Arrested, Charged

Two young Israeli men alleged by this author to have co-founded vDOS -- until recently the largest and most profitable cyber attack-for-hire service online -- were arrested and formally indicted this week in Israel on conspiracy and hacking charges. On Sept. 8, 2016, KrebsOnSecurity published a...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, February 2025 Edition

Microsoft today issued security updates to fix at least 56 vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and supported software, including two zero-day flaws that are being actively exploited. All supported Windows operating systems will receive an update this month for a buffer overflow...

FBI’s LockBit Takedown Postponed a Ticking Time Bomb in Fulton County, Ga.

The FBIs takedown of the LockBit ransomware group last week came as LockBit was preparing to release sensitive data stolen from government computer systems in Fulton County, Ga. But LockBit is now regrouping, and the gang says it will publish the stolen Fulton County data on March 2 unless paid a...

Who’s Behind the SWAT USA Reshipping Service?

Last week, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that one of the largest cybercrime services for laundering stolen merchandise was hacked recently, exposing its internal operations, finances and organizational structure. In todays Part II, well examine clues about the real-life identity of "Fearlless,"...

Adventures in Contacting the Russian FSB

KrebsOnSecurity recently had occasion to contact the Russian Federal Security Service FSB, the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI. In the process of doing so, I encountered a small snag: The FSBs website said in order to communicate with them securely, I needed to...

Malicious Office 365 Apps Are the Ultimate Insiders

Phishers targeting Microsoft Office 365 users increasingly are turning to specialized links that take users to their organizations own email login page. After a user logs in, the link prompts them to install a malicious but innocuously-named app that gives the attacker persistent, password-free...

Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

If you're running a business online, few things can be as disruptive or destructive to your brand as someone stealing your company's domain name and doing whatever they wish with it. Even so, most major Web site owners aren't taking full advantage of the security tools available to protect their...

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...

In a Few Days, Credit Freezes Will Be Fee-Free

Later this month, all of the three major consumer credit bureaus will be required to offer free credit freezes to all Americans and their dependents. Maybe you've been holding off freezing your credit file because your home state currently charges a fee for placing or thawing a credit freeze, or...

Human Resources Firm ComplyRight Breached

Cloud-based human resources company ComplyRight said this week that a security breach of its Web site may have jeopardized sensitive consumer information -- including names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and Social Security numbers -- from tax forms submitted by the company's thousand...

Scary Chip Flaws Raise Spectre of Meltdown

Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants have released updates for a pair of serious security flaws present in most modern computers, smartphones, tablets and mobile devices. Here's a brief rundown on the threat and what you can do to protect your devices. At issue are two different...

Does Your Organization Have a Security.txt File?

It happens all the time: Organizations get hacked because there isnt an obvious way for security researchers to let them know about security vulnerabilities or data leaks. Or maybe it isnt entirely clear who should get the report when remote access to an organizations internal network is being so...

Another 0-Day Looms for Many Western Digital Users

Some of Western Digitals MyCloud-based data storage devices. Image: WD. Countless Western Digital customers saw their MyBook Live network storage drives remotely wiped in the past month thanks to a bug in a product line the company stopped supporting in 2015, as well as a previously unknown...

How Does One Get Hired by a Top Cybercrime Gang?

The U.S. Department of Justice DOJ last week announced the arrest of a 55-year-old Latvian woman whos alleged to have worked as a programmer for Trickbot, a malware-as-a-service platform responsible for infecting millions of computers and seeding many of those systems with ransomware. Just how di...

Are You One of the 533M People Who Got Facebooked?

Neer-do-wells leaked personal data -- including phone numbers -- for some 553 million Facebook users this week. Facebook says the data was collected before 2020 when it changed things to prevent such information from being scraped from profiles. To my mind, this just reinforces the need to remove...

How $100M in Jobless Claims Went to Inmates

The U.S. Labor Departments inspector general said this week that roughly $100 million in fraudulent unemployment insurance claims were paid in 2020 to criminals who are already in jail. Thats a tiny share of the estimated tens of billions of dollars in jobless benefits states have given to identi...