French Firms Rocked by Kasbah Hacker?

A large number of French critical infrastructure firms were hacked as part of an extended malware campaign that appears to have been orchestrated by at least one attacker based in Morocco, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. An individual thought to be involved has earned accolades from the likes of...

Zyxel 0day Affects its Firewall Products, Too

On Monday, networking hardware maker Zyxel released security updates to plug a critical security hole in its network attached storage NAS devices that is being actively exploited by crooks who specialize in deploying ransomware. Today, Zyxel acknowledged the same flaw is present in many of its...

U.S. Charges 4 Chinese Military Officers in 2017 Equifax Hack

The U.S. Justice Department today unsealed indictments against four Chinese officers of the People's Liberation Army PLA accused of perpetrating the 2017 hack against consumer credit bureau Equifax that led to the theft of personal data on nearly 150 million Americans. DOJ officials said the four...

Ransomware Bites 400 Veterinary Hospitals

National Veterinary Associates NVA, a California company that owns more than 700 animal care facilities around the globe, is still working to recover from a ransomware attack late last month that affected more than half of those properties, separating many veterinary practices from their patient...

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...

Expert: IoT Botnets the Work of a ‘Vast Minority’

In December 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice announced indictments and guilty pleas by three men in the United States responsible for creating and using Mirai, a malware strain that enslaves poorly-secured "Internet of Things" or IoT devices like security cameras and digital video recorders f...

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...

Skyrocketing Bitcoin Fees Hit Carders in Wallet

Critics of unregulated virtual currencies like Bitcoin have long argued that the core utility of these payment systems lies in facilitating illicit commerce, such as buying drugs or stolen credit cards and identities. But recent spikes in the price of Bitcoin -- and the fees associated with movin...

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...

Don’t Wanna Pay Ransom Gangs? Test Your Backups.

Browse the comments on virtually any story about a ransomware attack and you will almost surely encounter the view that the victim organization could have avoided paying their extortionists if only theyd had proper data backups. But the ugly truth is there are many non-obvious reasons why victims...

ParkMobile Breach Exposes License Plate Data, Mobile Numbers of 21M Users

Someone is selling account information for 21 million customers of ParkMobile, a mobile parking app thats popular in North America. The stolen data includes customer email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, license plate numbers, hashed passwords and mailing addresses. KrebsOnSecurity firs...

Payroll/HR Giant PrismHR Hit by Ransomware?

PrismHR, a company that sells technology used by other firms to help more than 80,000 small businesses manage payroll, benefits, and human resources, has suffered what appears to be an ongoing ransomware attack that is disrupting many of its services. Hopkinton, Mass.-based PrismHR handles...

Bluetooth Overlay Skimmer That Blocks Chip

As a total sucker for anything skimming-related, I was interested to hear from a reader working security for a retail chain in the United States who recently found Bluetooth-enabled skimming devices placed over top of payment card terminals at several stores. Interestingly, these skimmers...

Ubiquiti: Change Your Password, Enable 2FA

Ubiquiti, a major vendor of cloud-enabled Internet of Things IoT devices such as routers, network video recorders, security cameras and access control systems, is urging customers to change their passwords and enable multi-factor authentication. The company says an incident at a third-party cloud...

QAnon/8Chan Sites Briefly Knocked Offline

A phone call to an Internet provider in Oregon on Sunday evening was all it took to briefly sideline multiple websites related to 8chan/8kun -- a controversial online image board linked to several mass shootings -- and QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory which holds that a cabal of Satanic...

Breached Data Indexer ‘Data Viper’ Hacked

Data Viper, a security startup that provides access to some 15 billion usernames, passwords and other information exposed in more than 8,000 website breaches, has itself been hacked and its user database posted online. The hackers also claim they are selling on the dark web roughly 2 billion...

The Year Targeted Phishing Went Mainstream

A story published here on July 12 about a new sextortion-based phishing scheme that invokes a real password used by each recipient has become the most-read piece on KrebsOnSecurity since this site launched in 2009. And with good reason -- sex sells the second most-read piece here was my 2015 scoo...

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...

Google to Fix Location Data Leak in Google Home, Chromecast

Google in the coming weeks is expected to fix a location privacy leak in two of its most popular consumer products. New research shows that Web sites can run a simple script in the background that collects precise location data on people who have a Google Home or Chromecast device installed...

Fund Targets Victims Scammed Via Western Union

If you, a friend or loved one lost money in a scam involving Western Union, some or all of those funds may be recoverable thanks to a more than half-billion dollar program set up by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. In January 2017, Englewood, Colo.-based Western Union settled a case with the FT...

Beware of Hurricane Harvey Relief Scams

U.S. federal agencies are warning citizens anxious to donate money for those victimized by Hurricane Harvey to be especially wary of scam artists. In years past we've seen shameless fraudsters stand up fake charities and other bogus relief efforts in a bid to capitalize on public concern over an...

Beware of Security by Press Release

On Wednesday, the security industry once again witnessed an all-too-familiar cycle: I call it "security by press release." It goes a bit like this: A security firm releases a report claiming to have unearthed a major flaw in a competitor's product; members of the trade press uncritically republis...

Got Robocalled? Don’t Get Mad; Get Busy.

Several times a week my cell phone receives the telephonic equivalent of spam: A robocall. On each occasion the call seems to come from a local number, but when I answer there is that telltale pause followed by an automated voice pitching some product or service. So when I heard from a reader who...

SSA.GOV To Require Stronger Authentication

The U.S. Social Security Administration will soon require Americans to use stronger authentication when accessing their accounts at ssa.gov. As part of the change, SSA will require all users to enter a username and password in addition to a one-time security code sent their email or phone. In thi...

Patch Tuesday, May 2026 Edition

Artificial intelligence platforms may be just as susceptible to social engineering as human beings, but they are proving remarkably good at finding security vulnerabilities in human-made computer code. That reality is on full display this month with some of the more widely-used software makers --...

Patch Tuesday, May 2025 Edition

Microsoft on Tuesday released software updates to fix at least 70 vulnerabilities in Windows and related products, including five zero-day flaws that are already seeing active exploitation. Adding to the sense of urgency with this month's patch batch from Redmond are fixes for two other weaknesse...

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...

Man Robbed of 16 Bitcoin Sues Young Thieves’ Parents

In 2018, Andrew Schober was digitally mugged for approximately $1 million worth of bitcoin. After several years of working with investigators, Schober says hes confident he has located two young men in the United Kingdom responsible for using a clever piece of digital clipboard-stealing malware t...

T-Mobile: Breach Exposed SSN/DOB of 40M+ People

T-Mobile is warning that a data breach has exposed the names, date of birth, Social Security number and drivers license/ID information of more than 40 million current, former or prospective customers who applied for credit with the company. The acknowledgment came less than 48 hours after million...

How Cyber Sleuths Cracked an ATM Shimmer Gang

In 2015, police departments worldwide started finding ATMs compromised with advanced new "shimming" devices made to steal data from chip card transactions. Authorities in the United States and abroad had seized many of these shimmers, but for years couldnt decrypt the data on the devices. This is...

Sealed U.S. Court Records Exposed in SolarWinds Breach

The ongoing breach affecting thousands of organizations that relied on backdoored products by network software firm SolarWinds may have jeopardized the privacy of countless sealed court documents on file with the U.S. federal court system, according to a memo released Wednesday by the...

Hamas May Be Threat to 8chan, QAnon Online

In October 2020, KrebsOnSecurity looked at how a web of sites connected to conspiracy theory movements QAnon and 8chan were being kept online by DDoS-Guard, a dodgy Russian firm that also hosts the official site for the terrorist group Hamas. New research shows DDoS-Guard relies on data centers...

Chinese Antivirus Firm Was Part of APT41 ‘Supply Chain’ Attack

The U.S. Justice Department this week indicted seven Chinese nationals for a decade-long hacking spree that targeted more than 100 high-tech and online gaming companies. The government alleges the men used malware-laced phishing emails and "supply chain" attacks to steal data from companies and...

Hacked Data Broker Accounts Fueled Phony COVID Loans, Unemployment Claims

A group of thieves thought to be responsible for collecting millions in fraudulent small business loans and unemployment insurance benefits from COVID-19 economic relief efforts gathered personal data on people and businesses they were impersonating by leveraging several compromised accounts at a...

Career Choice Tip: Cybercrime is Mostly Boring

When law enforcement agencies tout their latest cybercriminal arrest, the defendant is often cast as a bravado outlaw engaged in sophisticated, lucrative, even exciting activity. But new research suggests that as cybercrime has become dominated by pay-for-service offerings, the vast majority of...

When in Doubt: Hang Up, Look Up, & Call Back

Many security-conscious people probably think they'd never fall for a phone-based phishing scam. But if your response to such a scam involves anything other than hanging up and calling back the entity that claims to be calling, you may be in for a rude awakening. Here's how one security and...

What’s Behind the Wolters Kluwer Tax Outage?

Early in the afternoon on Friday, May, 3, I asked a friend to relay a message to his security contact at CCH, the cloud-based tax division of the global information services firm Wolters Kluwer in the Netherlands. The message was that the same file directories containing new versions of CCH's...

Who and What Is Coinhive?

Multiple security firms recently identified cryptocurrency mining service Coinhive as the top malicious threat to Web users, thanks to the tendency for Coinhive's computer code to be used on hacked Web sites to steal the processing power of its visitors' devices. This post looks at how Coinhive...

Exclusive: Dutch Cops on AlphaBay ‘Refugees’

Following today's breaking news about U.S. and international authorities taking down the competing Dark Web drug bazaars AlphaBay and Hansa Market, KrebsOnSecurity caught up with the Dutch investigators who took over Hansa on June 20, 2017. When U.S. authorities shuttered AlphaBay on July 5, poli...

Global ‘Wana’ Ransomware Outbreak Earned Perpetrators $26,000 So Far

As thousands of organizations work to contain and clean up the mess from this week's devastating Wana ransomware attack, the fraudsters responsible for releasing the digital contagion are no doubt counting their earnings and congratulating themselves on a job well done. But according to a review ...

Who is the Network Access Broker ‘Wazawaka?’

In a great many ransomware attacks, the criminals who pillage the victims network are not the same crooks who gained the initial access to the victim organization. More commonly, the infected PC or stolen VPN credentials the gang used to break in were purchased from a cybercriminal middleman know...

500M Avira Antivirus Users Introduced to Cryptomining

Many readers were surprised to learn recently that the popular Norton 360 antivirus suite now ships with a program which lets customers make money mining virtual currency. But Norton 360 isnt alone in this dubious endeavor: Avira antivirus -- which has built a base of 500 million users worldwide...

Trial Ends in Guilty Verdict for DDoS-for-Hire Boss

A jury in California today reached a guilty verdict in the trial of Matthew Gatrel, a St. Charles, Ill. man charged in 2018 with operating two online services that allowed paying customers to launch powerful distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks against Internet users and websites. Gatrels...

Investment Scammer John Davies Reinvents Himself?

John Bernard, a pseudonym used by a convicted thief and con artist named John Clifton Davies who’s fleeced dozens of technology startups out of an estimated $30 million, appears to have reinvented himself again after being exposed in a recent investigative series published here. Sources tell...

Task Force Seeks to Disrupt Ransomware Payments

Some of the worlds top tech firms are backing a new industry task force focused on disrupting cybercriminal ransomware gangs by limiting their ability to get paid, and targeting the individuals and finances of the organized thieves behind these crimes. In a 81-page report delivered to the Biden...

Note to Self: Create Non-Exhaustive List of Competitors

What was the best news you heard so far this month? Mine was learning that KrebsOnSecurity is listed as a restricted competitor by Gartner Inc. NYSE:IT -- a $4 billion technology goliath whose analyst reports can move markets and shape the IT industry. Earlier this month, a reader pointed my...

Would You Have Fallen for This Phone Scam?

You may have heard that today's phone fraudsters like to use caller ID spoofing services to make their scam calls seem more believable. But you probably didn't know that these fraudsters also can use caller ID spoofing to trick your bank into giving up information about recent transactions on you...

When Your Used Car is a Little Too ‘Mobile’

Many modern vehicles let owners use the Internet or a mobile device to control the car's locks, track location and performance data, and start the engine. But who exactly owns that control is not always clear when these smart cars are sold or leased anew. Here's the story of one former electric...

Booter Boss Busted By Bacon Pizza Buy

A Pennsylvania man who operated one of the Internet's longest-running online attack-for-hire or "booter" services was sentenced to five years probation today. While the young man's punishment was heavily tempered by his current poor health, the defendant's dietary choices may have contributed to...

DDoS Mitigation Firm Founder Admits to DDoS

A Georgia man who co-founded a service designed to protect companies from crippling distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks has pleaded to paying a DDoS-for-hire service to launch attacks against others. Tucker Preston, 22, of Macon, Ga., pleaded guilty last week in a New Jersey court to one...