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...

Fake Lawsuit Threat Exposes Privnote Phishing Sites

A cybercrook who has been setting up websites that mimic the self-destructing message service privnote.com accidentally exposed the breadth of their operations recently when they threatened to sue a software company. The disclosure revealed a profitable network of phishing sites that behave and...

BlackCat Ransomware Group Implodes After Apparent $22M Payment by Change Healthcare

There are indications that U.S. healthcare giant Change Healthcare has made a $22 million extortion payment to the infamous BlackCat ransomware group a.k.a. "ALPHV" as the company struggles to bring services back online amid a cyberattack that has disrupted prescription drug services nationwide f...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

All Aboard the Pequod!

Like countless others, I frittered away the better part of Jan. 6 doomscrolling and watching television coverage of the horrifying events unfolding in our nations capital, where a mob of President Trump supporters and QAnon conspiracy theorists was incited to lay siege to the U.S. Capitol. For...

Patch Tuesday, Good Riddance 2020 Edition

Microsoft today issued its final batch of security updates for Windows PCs in 2020, ending the year with a relatively light patch load. Nine of the 58 security vulnerabilities addressed this month earned Microsofts most-dire "critical" label, meaning they can be abused by malware or miscreants to...

Due Diligence That Money Can’t Buy

Most of us automatically put our guard up when someone we dont know promises something too good to be true. But when the too-good-to-be-true thing starts as our idea, sometimes that instinct fails to kick in. Heres the story of how companies searching for investors to believe in their ideas can r...

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...

US Government Sites Give Bad Security Advice

Many U.S. government Web sites now carry a message prominently at the top of their home pages meant to help visitors better distinguish between official U.S. government properties and phishing pages. Unfortunately, part of that message is misleading and may help perpetuate a popular...

Think You’ve Got Your Credit Freezes Covered? Think Again.

I spent a few days last week speaking at and attending a conference on responding to identity theft. The forum was held in Florida, one of the major epicenters for identity fraud complaints in United States. One gripe I heard from several presenters was that identity thieves increasingly are...

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...

How to Lose a Fortune with Just One Bad Click

Image: Shutterstock, iHaMoo. Adam Griffin is still in disbelief over how quickly he was robbed of nearly $500,000 in cryptocurrencies. A scammer called using a real Google phone number to warn his Gmail account was being hacked, sent email security alerts directly from google.com, and ultimately...

Who is Alleged Medibank Hacker Aleksandr Ermakov?

Authorities in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States this week levied financial sanctions against a Russian man accused of stealing data on nearly 10 million customers of the Australian health insurance giant Medibank. 33-year-old Aleksandr Ermakov allegedly stole and leaked the...

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...

Tech CEO Pleads to Wire Fraud in IP Address Scheme

The CEO of a South Carolina technology firm has pleaded guilty to 20 counts of wire fraud in connection with an elaborate network of phony companies set up to obtain more than 735,000 Internet Protocol IP addresses from the nonprofit organization that leases the digital real estate to entities in...

The Joys of Owning an ‘OG’ Email Account

When you own a short email address at a popular email provider, you are bound to get gobs of spam, and more than a few alerts about random people trying to seize control over the account. If your account name is short and desirable enough, this kind of activity can make the account less reliable...

Sendgrid Under Siege from Hacked Accounts

Email service provider Sendgrid is grappling with an unusually large number of customer accounts whose passwords have been cracked, sold to spammers, and abused for sending phishing and email malware attacks. Sendgrids parent company Twilio says it is working on a plan to require multi-factor...

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...

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...

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...

Is Your Android TV Streaming Box Part of a Botnet?

On the surface, the Superbox media streaming devices for sale at retailers like BestBuy and Walmart may seem like a steal: They offer unlimited access to more than 2,200 pay-per-view and streaming services like Netflix , ESPN and Hulu , all for a one-time fee of around $400. But security experts...

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...

Funding Expires for Key Cyber Vulnerability Database

A critical resource that cybersecurity professionals worldwide rely on to identify, mitigate and fix security vulnerabilities in software and hardware is in danger of breaking down. The federally funded, non-profit research and development organization MITRE warned today that its contract to...

Patch Tuesday, April 2025 Edition

Microsoft today released updates to plug at least 121 security holes in its Windows operating systems and software, including one vulnerability that is already being exploited in the wild. Eleven of those flaws earned Microsoft's most-dire "critical" rating, meaning malware or malcontents could...

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...

How Did Authorities Identify the Alleged Lockbit Boss?

Last week, the United States joined the U.K. and Australia in sanctioning and charging a Russian man named Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev as the leader of the infamous LockBit ransomware group. LockBits leader "LockBitSupp" claims the feds named the wrong guy, saying the charges dont explain how they...

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...

NJ Man Hired Online to Firebomb, Shoot at Homes Gets 13 Years in Prison

A 22-year-old New Jersey man has been sentenced to more than 13 years in prison for participating in a firebombing and a shooting at homes in Pennsylvania last year. Patrick McGovern-Allen was the subject of a Sept. 4, 2022 story here about the emergence of "violence-as-a-service" offerings, wher...

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...

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...

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...

The Internet is Held Together With Spit & Baling Wire

A visualization of the Internet made using network routing data. Image: Barrett Lyon, opte.org. Imagine being able to disconnect or redirect Internet traffic destined for some of the worlds biggest companies -- just by spoofing an email. This is the nature of a threat vector recently removed by a...

FBI Raids Chinese Point-of-Sale Giant PAX Technology

U.S. federal investigators today raided the Florida offices of PAX Technology, a Chinese provider of point-of-sale devices used by millions of businesses and retailers globally. KrebsOnSecurity has learned the raid is tied to reports that PAXs systems may have been involved in cyberattacks on U.S...

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...

Why & Where You Should Plant Your Flag

Several stories here have highlighted the importance of creating accounts online tied to your various identity, financial and communications services before identity thieves do it for you. This post examines some of the key places where everyone should plant their virtual flags. As KrebsOnSecurit...

Is Your Chip Card Secure? Much Depends on Where You Bank

Chip-based credit and debit cards are designed to make it infeasible for skimming devices or malware to clone your card when you pay for something by dipping the chip instead of swiping the stripe. But a recent series of malware attacks on U.S.-based merchants suggest thieves are exploiting...

Should SaaS Companies Publish Customers Lists?

A few weeks back, HR and financial management firm Workday.com sent a security advisory to customers warning that crooks were sending targeted malware phishing attacks at customers. At the same time, Workday is publishing on its site a list of more than 800 companies that use its services, making...

Crickets from Chirp Systems in Smart Lock Key Leak

The U.S. government is warning that "smart locks" securing entry to an estimated 50,000 dwellings nationwide contain hard-coded credentials that can be used to remotely open any of the locks. The locks maker Chirp Systems remains unresponsive, even though it was first notified about the critical...

Don’t Let Zombie Zoom Links Drag You Down

Many organizations -- including quite a few Fortune 500 firms -- have exposed web links that allow anyone to initiate a Zoom video conference meeting as a valid employee. These company-specific Zoom links, which include a permanent user ID number and an embedded passcode, can work indefinitely an...

U.S. Hacks QakBot, Quietly Removes Botnet Infections

The U.S. government today announced a coordinated crackdown against QakBot, a complex malware family used by multiple cybercrime groups to lay the groundwork for ransomware infections. The international law enforcement operation involved seizing control over the botnets online infrastructure, and...

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...