Who and What is Behind the Malware Proxy Service SocksEscort?

Researchers this month uncovered a two-year-old Linux-based remote access trojan dubbed AVrecon that enslaves Internet routers into botnet that bilks online advertisers and performs password-spraying attacks. Now new findings reveal that AVrecon is the malware engine behind a 12-year-old service...

LeakedSource Owner Quit Ashley Madison a Month Before 2015 Hack

This is Part III in a series on research conducted for a recent Hulu documentary on the 2015 hack of marital infidelity website AshleyMadison.com. In 2019, a Canadian company called Defiant Tech Inc. pleaded guilty to running LeakedSource.com, a service that sold access to billions of passwords a...

Medical Debt Collection Firm R1 RCM Hit in Ransomware Attack

R1 RCM Inc. NASDAQ:RCM, one of the nations largest medical debt collection companies, has been hit in a ransomware attack. Formerly known as Accretive Health Inc., Chicago-based R1 RCM brought in revenues of $1.18 billion in 2019. The company has more than 19,000 employees and contracts with at...

Ransomware Gangs Don’t Need PR Help

We've seen an ugly trend recently of tech news stories and cybersecurity firms trumpeting claims of ransomware attacks on companies large and small, apparently based on little more than the say-so of the ransomware gangs themselves. Such coverage is potentially quite harmful and plays deftly into...

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...

Europe’s Largest Private Hospital Operator Fresenius Hit by Ransomware

Fresenius, Europe's largest private hospital operator and a major provider of dialysis products and services that are in such high demand thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, has been hit in a ransomware cyber attack on its technology systems. The company said the incident has limited some of its...

Sipping from the Coronavirus Domain Firehose

Security experts are poring over thousands of new Coronavirus-themed domain names registered each day, but this often manual effort struggles to keep pace with the flood of domains invoking the virus to promote malware and phishing sites, as well as non-existent healthcare products and charities...

Are Your Google Groups Leaking Data?

Google is reminding organizations to review how much of their Google Groups mailing lists should be public and indexed by Google.com. The notice was prompted in part by a review that KrebsOnSecurity undertook with several researchers who've been busy cataloging thousands of companies that are usi...

Ayuda! (Help!) Equifax Has My Data!

Equifax last week disclosed a historic breach involving Social Security numbers and other sensitive data on as many as 143 million Americans. The company said the breach also impacted an undisclosed number of people in Canada and the United Kingdom. But the official list of victim countries may n...

MolinaHealthcare.com Exposed Patient Records

Earlier this month, KrebsOnSecurity featured a story about a basic security flaw in the Web site of medical diagnostics firm True Health Group that let anyone who was logged in to the site view all other patient records. In that story I mentioned True Health was one of three major healthcare...

Data Broker Radaris Loses Domains in Privacy Fight

The consumer data broker Radaris.com has long had a reputation for ignoring requests to remove personal information from its vast empire of people-search services online. That reputation caught up with the company recently in a lawsuit alleging Radaris violated a New Jersey privacy law that...

KrebsOnSecurity Hit With Near-Record 6.3 Tbps DDoS

KrebsOnSecurity last week was hit by a near record distributed denial-of-service DDoS attack that clocked in at more than 6.3 terabits of data per second a terabit is one trillion bits of data. The brief attack appears to have been a test run for a massive new Internet of Things IoT botnet capabl...

Why CISA is Warning CISOs About a Breach at Sisense

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA said today it is investigating a breach at business intelligence company Sisense, whose products are designed to allow companies to view the status of multiple third-party online services in a single dashboard. CISA urged all Sisense...

It’s Still Easy for Anyone to Become You at Experian

In the summer of 2022, KrebsOnSecurity documented the plight of several readers who had their accounts at big-three consumer credit reporting bureau Experian hijacked after identity thieves simply re-registered the accounts using a different email address. Sixteen months later, Experian clearly h...

Kroll Employee SIM-Swapped for Crypto Investor Data

Security consulting giant Kroll disclosed today that a SIM-swapping attack against one of its employees led to the theft of user information for multiple cryptocurrency platforms that are relying on Kroll services in their ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. And there are indications that fraudsters...

Karma Catches Up to Global Phishing Service 16Shop

Youve probably never heard of "16Shop," but theres a good chance someone using it has tried to phish you. A 16Shop phishing page spoofing Apple and targeting Japanese users. Image: Akamai.com. The international police organization INTERPOL said last week it had shuttered the notorious 16Shop, a...

Diligere, Equity-Invest Are New Firms of U.K. Con Man

John Clifton Davies, a convicted fraudster estimated to have bilked dozens of technology startups out of more than $30 million through phony investment schemes, has a brand new pair of scam companies that are busy dashing startup dreams: A fake investment firm called Equity-Invest.ch, and...

Meet the Brains Behind the Malware-Friendly AI Chat Service ‘WormGPT’

WormGPT, a private new chatbot service advertised as a way to use Artificial Intelligence AI to write malicious software without all the pesky prohibitions on such activity enforced by the likes of ChatGPT and Google Bard, has started adding restrictions of its own on how the service can be used...

Estonian Tied to 13 Ransomware Attacks Gets 66 Months in Prison

An Estonian man was sentenced today to more than five years in a U.S. prison for his role in at least 13 ransomware attacks that caused losses of approximately $53 million. Prosecutors say the accused also enjoyed a lengthy career of "cashing out" access to hacked bank accounts worldwide. Maksim...

IRS Will Soon Require Selfies for Online Access

If you created an online account to manage your tax records with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service IRS, those login credentials will cease to work later this year. The agency says that by the summer of 2022, the only way to log in to irs.gov will be through ID.me, an online identity verification...

Who is Tech Investor John Bernard?

John Bernard, the subject of a story here last week about a self-proclaimed millionaire investor who has bilked countless tech startups, appears to be a pseudonym for John Clifton Davies, a U.K. man who absconded from justice before being convicted on multiple counts of fraud in 2015. Prior to hi...

Business ID Theft Soars Amid COVID Closures

Identity thieves who specialize in running up unauthorized lines of credit in the names of small businesses are having a field day with all of the closures and economic uncertainty wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. This story is about the victims of a particularly...

LG to Ban Residential Proxies from Smart TV Apps

The home appliance giant LG Electronics USA said this week it plans to suspend any apps built for its smart TVs that turn one's television into an always-on residential proxy node. The move comes less than a month after researchers found that more than 42 percent of games and other apps available...

‘Popa’ Botnet Linked to Publicly-Traded Israeli Firm

For the past four years, a sprawling Android-based botnet called Popa has forced millions of consumer TV boxes to relay Internet traffic linked to advertising fraud, account takeovers, and mass data-scraping efforts. This week, researchers from multiple security firms concluded that the Popa botn...

New 0-Day Attacks Linked to China’s ‘Volt Typhoon’

Malicious hackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Versa Director, a software product used by many Internet and IT service providers. Researchers believe the activity is linked to Volt Typhoon, a Chinese cyber espionage group focused on infiltrating critical U.S. networks and laying the...

The Not-so-True People-Search Network from China

Its not unusual for the data brokers behind people-search websites to use pseudonyms in their day-to-day lives you would, too. Some of these personal data purveyors even try to reinvent their online identities in a bid to hide their conflicts of interest. But its not every day you run across a...

LastPass: ‘Horse Gone Barn Bolted’ is Strong Password

The password manager service LastPass is now forcing some of its users to pick longer master passwords. LastPass says the changes are needed to ensure all customers are protected by their latest security improvements. But critics say the move is little more than a public relations stunt that will...

How Malicious Android Apps Slip Into Disguise

Researchers say mobile malware purveyors have been abusing a bug in the Google Android platform that lets them sneak malicious code into mobile apps and evade security scanning tools. Google says it has updated its app malware detection mechanisms in response to the new research. At issue is a...

Leaked Chats Show LAPSUS$ Stole T-Mobile Source Code

KrebsOnSecurity recently reviewed a copy of the private chat messages between members of the LAPSUS$ cybercrime group in the week leading up to the arrest of its most active members last month. The logs show LAPSUS$ breached T-Mobile multiple times in March, stealing source code for a range of...

Apple AirTag Bug Enables ‘Good Samaritan’ Attack

The new $30 AirTag tracking device from Apple has a feature that allows anyone who finds one of these tiny location beacons to scan it with a mobile phone and discover its owners phone number if the AirTag has been set to lost mode. But according to new research, this same feature can be abused t...

How Cyber Safe is Your Drinking Water Supply?

Amid multiple recent reports of hackers breaking into and tampering with drinking water treatment systems comes a new industry survey with some sobering findings: A majority of the 52,000 separate drinking water systems in the United States still havent inventoried some or any of their informatio...

International Action Targets Emotet Crimeware

Authorities across Europe on Tuesday said theyd seized control over Emotet, a prolific malware strain and cybercrime-as-service operation. Investigators say the action could help quarantine more than a million Microsoft Windows systems currently compromised with malware tied to Emotet infections...

E-Verify’s “SSN Lock” is Nothing of the Sort

One of the most-read advice columns on this site is a 2018 piece called "Plant Your Flag, Mark Your Territory," which tried to impress upon readers the importance of creating accounts at websites like those at the Social Security Administration, the IRS and others before crooks do it for you. A k...

This Service Helps Malware Authors Fix Flaws in their Code

Almost daily now there is news about flaws in commercial software that lead to computers getting hacked and seeded with malware. But the reality is most malicious software also has its share of security holes that open the door for security researchers or ne'er-do-wells to liberate or else seize...

Breaches at NetworkSolutions, Register.com, and Web.com

Top domain name registrars NetworkSolutions.com, Register.com and Web.com are asking customers to reset their passwords after discovering an intrusion in August 2019 in which customer account information was accessed. A notice to customers at notice.web.com. "On October 16, 2019, Web.com determin...

Secret Service Warns of Surge in ATM ‘Wiretapping’ Attacks

The U.S. Secret Service is warning financial institutions about a recent uptick in a form of ATM skimming that involves cutting cupcake-sized holes in a cash machine and then using a combination of magnets and medical devices to siphon customer account data directly from the card reader inside th...

Further Down the Trello Rabbit Hole

Last month's story about organizations exposing passwords and other sensitive data via collaborative online spaces at Trello.com only scratched the surface of the problem. A deeper dive suggests a large number of government agencies, marketing firms, healthcare organizations and IT support...

How to Fight Mobile Number Port-out Scams

T-Mobile, AT&T and other mobile carriers are reminding customers to take advantage of free services that can block identity thieves from easily "porting" your mobile number out to another provider, which allows crooks to intercept your calls and messages while your phone goes dark. Tips for...

Oops: DanaBot Malware Devs Infected Their Own PCs

The U.S. government today unsealed criminal charges against 16 individuals accused of operating and selling DanaBot , a prolific strain of information-stealing malware that has been sold on Russian cybercrime forums since 2018. The FBI says a newer version of DanaBot was used for espionage, and...

Canadian Man Stuck in Triangle of E-Commerce Fraud

A Canadian man who says hes been falsely charged with orchestrating a complex e-commerce scam is seeking to clear his name. His case appears to involve "triangulation fraud," which occurs when a consumer purchases something online -- from a seller on Amazon or eBay, for example -- but the seller...

Many Public Salesforce Sites are Leaking Private Data

A shocking number of organizations -- including banks and healthcare providers -- are leaking private and sensitive information from their public Salesforce Community websites, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. The data exposures all stem from a misconfiguration in Salesforce Community that allows an...

U.S., U.K. Sanction 7 Men Tied to Trickbot Hacking Group

Authorities in the United States and United Kingdom today levied financial sanctions against seven men accused of operating "Trickbot," a cybercrime-as-a-service platform based in Russia that has enabled countless ransomware attacks and bank account takeovers since its debut in 2016. The U.S...

Finland’s Most-Wanted Hacker Nabbed in France

Julius "Zeekill" Kivimäki, a 25-year-old Finnish man charged with extorting a local online psychotherapy practice and leaking therapy notes for more than 22,000 patients online, was arrested this week in France. A notorious hacker convicted of perpetrating tens of thousands of cybercrimes, Kivimä...

Experian Glitch Exposing Credit Files Lasted 47 Days

On Dec. 23, 2022, KrebsOnSecurity alerted big-three consumer credit reporting bureau Experian that identity thieves had worked out how to bypass its security and access any consumers full credit report -- armed with nothing more than a persons name, address, date of birth, and Social Security...

A Retrospective on the 2015 Ashley Madison Breach

Its been seven years since the online cheating site AshleyMadison.com was hacked and highly sensitive data about its users posted online. The leak led to the public shaming and extortion of many Ashley Madison users, and to at least two suicides. To date, little is publicly known about the...

Ransomware Group Debuts Searchable Victim Data

Cybercrime groups that specialize in stealing corporate data and demanding a ransom not to publish it have tried countless approaches to shaming their victims into paying. The latest innovation in ratcheting up the heat comes from the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group, which has traditionally...

Russia Sanctions May Spark Escalating Cyber Conflict

President Biden joined European leaders this week in enacting economic sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. The West has promised tougher sanctions are coming, but experts warn these will almost certainly trigger a Russian retaliation against America and its allies,...

Fake Investor John Bernard Sinks Norwegian Green Shipping Dreams

Several articles here have delved into the history of John Bernard, the pseudonym used by a fake billionaire technology investor who tricked dozens of startups into giving him tens of millions of dollars. Bernards latest victim -- a Norwegian company hoping to build a fleet of environmentally...

REvil Ransom Arrest, $6M Seizure, and $10M Reward

The U.S. Department of Justice today announced the arrest of Ukrainian man accused of deploying ransomware on behalf of the REvil ransomware gang, a Russian-speaking cybercriminal collective that has extorted hundreds of millions from victim organizations. The DOJ also said it had seized $6.1...

Payment Processing Giant TSYS: Ransomware Incident “Immaterial” to Company

Payment card processing giant TSYS suffered a ransomware attack earlier this month. Since then reams of data stolen from the company have been posted online, with the attackers promising to publish more in the coming days. But the company says the malware did not jeopardize card data, and that th...