1099 matches found
Ten Years Later, New Clues in the Target Breach
On Dec. 18, 2013, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that U.S. retail giant Target was battling a wide-ranging computer intrusion that compromised more than 40 million customer payment cards over the previous month. The malware used in the Target breach included the text string "Rescator," which also...
When Low-Tech Hacks Cause High-Impact Breaches
Web hosting giant GoDaddy made headlines this month when it disclosed that a multi-year breach allowed intruders to steal company source code, siphon customer and employee login credentials, and foist malware on customer websites. Media coverage understandably focused on GoDaddys admission that i...
Judge Orders U.S. Lawyer in Russian Botnet Case to Pay Google
In December 2021, Google filed a civil lawsuit against two Russian men thought to be responsible for operating Glupteba, one of the Internets largest and oldest botnets. The defendants, who initially pursued a strategy of counter suing Google for interfering in their sprawling cybercrime business...
How Card Skimming Disproportionally Affects Those Most In Need
When people banking in the United States lose money because their payment card got skimmed at an ATM, gas pump or grocery store checkout terminal, they may face hassles or delays in recovering any lost funds, but they are almost always made whole by their financial institution. Yet, one class of...
Glut of Fake LinkedIn Profiles Pits HR Against the Bots
A recent proliferation of phony executive profiles on LinkedIn is creating something of an identity crisis for the business networking site, and for companies that rely on it to hire and screen prospective employees. The fabricated LinkedIn identities -- which pair AI-generated profile photos wit...
Hackers Gaining Power of Subpoena Via Fake “Emergency Data Requests”
There is a terrifying and highly effective "method" that criminal hackers are now using to harvest sensitive customer data from Internet service providers, phone companies and social media firms. It involves compromising email accounts and websites tied to police departments and government...
Hoax Email Blast Abused Poor Coding in FBI Website
The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI confirmed today that its fbi.gov domain name and Internet address were used to blast out thousands of fake emails about a cybercrime investigation. According to an interview with the person who claimed responsibility for the hoax, the spam messages were sen...
KrebsOnSecurity Hit By Huge New IoT Botnet “Meris”
On Thursday evening, KrebsOnSecurity was the subject of a rather massive and mercifully brief distributed denial-of-service DDoS attack. The assault came from "Meris," the same new botnet behind record-shattering attacks against Russian search giant Yandex this week and internet infrastructure fi...
Ukrainian Police Nab Six Tied to CLOP Ransomware
Authorities in Ukraine this week charged six people alleged to be part of the CLOP ransomware group, a cybercriminal gang said to have extorted more than half a billion dollars from victims. Some of CLOPs victims this year alone include Stanford University Medical School, the University of...
The Taxman Cometh for ID Theft Victims
The unprecedented volume of unemployment insurance fraud witnessed in 2020 hasnt abated, although news coverage of the issue has largely been pushed off the front pages by other events. But the ID theft problem is coming to the fore once again: Countless Americans will soon be receiving notices...
Security Blueprints of Many Companies Leaked in Hack of Swedish Firm Gunnebo
In March 2020, KrebsOnSecurity alerted Swedish security giant Gunnebo Group that hackers had broken into its network and sold the access to a criminal group which specializes in deploying ransomware. In August, Gunnebo said it had successfully thwarted a ransomware attack, but this week it emerge...
Attacks Aimed at Disrupting the Trickbot Botnet
Over the past 10 days, someone has been launching a series of coordinated attacks designed to disrupt Trickbot, an enormous collection of more than two million malware-infected Windows PCs that are constantly being harvested for financial data and are often used as the entry point for deploying...
Turn on MFA Before Crooks Do It For You
Hundreds of popular websites now offer some form of multi-factor authentication MFA, which can help users safeguard access to accounts when their password is breached or stolen. But people who don't take advantage of these added safeguards may find it far more difficult to regain access when thei...
How to Avoid Card Skimmers at the Pump
Previous stories here on the proliferation of card-skimming devices hidden inside fuel pumps have offered a multitude of security tips for readers looking to minimize their chances of becoming the next victim, such as favoring filling stations that use security cameras and tamper-evident tape on...
U.S. Arrests 13, Charges 36 in ‘Infraud’ Cybercrime Forum Bust
The U.S. Justice Department announced charges on Wednesday against three dozen individuals thought to be key members of 'Infraud," a long-running cybercrime forum that federal prosecutors say cost consumers more than a half billion dollars. In conjunction with the forum takedown, 13 alleged Infra...
After AlphaBay’s Demise, Customers Flocked to Dark Market Run by Dutch Police
Earlier this month, news broke that authorities had seized the Dark Web marketplace AlphaBay, an online black market that peddled everything from heroin to stolen identity and credit card data. But it wasn't until today, when the U.S. Justice Department held a press conference to detail the...
FBI: Extortion, CEO Fraud Among Top Online Fraud Complaints in 2016
Online extortion, tech support scams and phishing attacks that spoof the boss were among the most costly cyber scams reported by consumers and businesses last year, according to new figures from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center IC3. The IC3 report released Thursday correctly identifies...
Website Flaw Let True Health Diagnostics Users View All Medical Records
Over the past two weeks readers have pointed KrebsOnSecurity to no fewer than three different healthcare providers that failed to provide the most basic care to protect their patients' records online. Only one of the three companies -- the subject of today's story -- required users to be logged o...
CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on Github
Until this past weekend, a contractor for the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency CISA maintained a public GitHub repository that exposed credentials to several highly privileged AWS GovCloud accounts and a large number of internal CISA systems. Security experts said the public archive...
Why Your VPN May Not Be As Secure As It Claims
Virtual private networking VPN companies market their services as a way to prevent anyone from snooping on your Internet usage. But new research suggests this is a dangerous assumption when connecting to a VPN via an untrusted network, because attackers on the same network could force a targets...
U.S. Internet Leaked Years of Internal, Customer Emails
The Minnesota-based Internet provider U.S. Internet Corp. has a business unit called Securence, which specializes in providing filtered, secure email services to businesses, educational institutions and government agencies worldwide. But until it was notified last week, U.S. Internet was publishi...
Discord Admins Hacked by Malicious Bookmarks
A number of Discord communities focused on cryptocurrency have been hacked this past month after their administrators were tricked into running malicious Javascript code disguised as a Web browser bookmark. This attack involves malicious Javascript that is added to ones browser by dragging a...
Why You Should Opt Out of Sharing Data With Your Mobile Provider
A new breach involving data from nine million AT&T customers is a fresh reminder that your mobile provider likely collects and shares a great deal of information about where you go and what you do with your mobile device -- unless and until you affirmatively opt out of this data collection. Heres...
New T-Mobile Breach Affects 37 Million Accounts
T-Mobile today disclosed a data breach affecting tens of millions of customer accounts, its second major data exposure in as many years. In a filing with federal regulators, T-Mobile said an investigation determined that someone abused its systems to harvest subscriber data tied to approximately ...
FBI’s Vetted Info Sharing Network ‘InfraGard’ Hacked
InfraGard, a program run by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI to build cyber and physical threat information sharing partnerships with the private sector, this week saw its database of contact information on more than 80,000 members go up for sale on an English-language cybercrime foru...
Why 8kun Went Offline During the January 6 Hearings
The latest Jan. 6 committee hearing on Tuesday examined the role of conspiracy theory communities like 8kun.top and TheDonald.win in helping to organize and galvanize supporters who responded to former President Trumps invitation to "be wild" in Washington, D.C. on that chaotic day. At the same...
Report: Missouri Governor’s Office Responsible for Teacher Data Leak
Missouri Governor Mike Parson made headlines last year when he vowed to criminally prosecute a journalist for reporting a security flaw in a state website that exposed personal information of more than 100,000 teachers. But Missouri prosecutors now say they will not pursue charges following...
At Request of U.S., Russia Rounds Up 14 REvil Ransomware Affiliates
The Russian government said today it arrested 14 people accused of working for "REvil," a particularly aggressive ransomware group that has extorted hundreds of millions of dollars from victim organizations. The Russian Federal Security Service FSB said the actions were taken in response to a...
Romanian Skimmer Gang in Mexico Outed by KrebsOnSecurity Stole $1.2 Billion
An exhaustive inquiry published today by a consortium of investigative journalists says a three-part series KrebsOnSecurity published in 2015 on a Romanian ATM skimming gang operating in Mexico's top tourist destinations disrupted their highly profitable business, which raked in an estimated $1.2...
Some Basic Rules for Securing Your IoT Stuff
Most readers here have likely heard or read various prognostications about the impending doom from the proliferation of poorly-secured "Internet of Things" or IoT devices. Loosely defined as any gadget or gizmo that connects to the Internet but which most consumers probably wouldn't begin to know...
Equifax Breach Response Turns Dumpster Fire
I cannot recall a previous data breach in which the breached company's public outreach and response has been so haphazard and ill-conceived as the one coming right now from big-three credit bureau Equifax, which rather clumsily announced Thursday that an intrusion jeopardized Social security...
Read This Before You Buy That TV Streaming Stick
Security experts have been sounding the alarm for years about the risks of using generic TV boxes that promise unlimited content streaming for a one-time fee, warning that they secretly rent the user's Internet connection out to strangers. But a groundbreaking new analysis finds these devices als...
A Record-Breaking Patch Tuesday for June 2026
Microsoft today released software updates to plug nearly 200 security holes across its Windows operating systems and supported software, a record number of fixes for the company's monthly Patch Tuesday cycle. Nearly three dozen of those bugs earned Microsoft's most dire "critical" rating, and...
Fintech Giant Finastra Investigating Data Breach
The financial technology firm Finastra is investigating the alleged large-scale theft of information from its internal file transfer platform, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Finastra, which provides software and services to 45 of the world's top 50 banks, notified customers of the security incident...
An Interview With the Target & Home Depot Hacker
In December 2023, KrebsOnSecurity revealed the real-life identity of Rescator , the nickname used by a Russian cybercriminal who sold more than 100 million payment cards stolen from Target and Home Depot between 2013 and 2014. Moscow resident Mikhail Shefel , who confirmed using the Rescator...
U.S. Indicts 2 Top Russian Hackers, Sanctions Cryptex
The United States today unveiled sanctions and indictments against the alleged proprietor of Joker 's Stash, a now-defunct cybercrime store that peddled tens of millions of payment cards stolen in some of the largest data breaches of the past decade. The government also indicted and sanctioned a...
Cybercrime Rapper Sues Bank over Fraud Investigation
A partial selfie posted by Punchmade Dev to his Twitter account. Yes, that is a functioning handheld card skimming device, encrusted in diamonds. Underneath that are more medallions, including a diamond-studded bitcoin and payment card. In January, KrebsOnSecurity wrote about rapper Punchmade Dev...
Stark Industries Solutions: An Iron Hammer in the Cloud
The homepage of Stark Industries Solutions. Two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a large, mysterious new Internet hosting firm called Stark Industries Solutions materialized and quickly became the epicenter of massive distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks on government a...
Arrests in $400M SIM-Swap Tied to Heist at FTX?
Three Americans were charged this week with stealing more than $400 million in a November 2022 SIM-swapping attack. The U.S. government did not name the victim organization, but there is every indication that the money was stolen from the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which had just...
Hackers Stole Access Tokens from Okta’s Support Unit
Okta, a company that provides identity tools like multi-factor authentication and single sign-on to thousands of businesses, has suffered a security breach involving a compromise of its customer support unit, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Okta says the incident affected a "very small number" of...
Russia Sends Cybersecurity CEO to Jail for 14 Years
The Russian government today handed down a treason conviction and 14-year prison sentence on Iyla Sachkov, the former founder and CEO of one of Russias largest cybersecurity firms. Sachkov, 37, has been detained for nearly two years under charges that the Kremlin has kept classified and hidden fr...
Few Fortune 100 Firms List Security Pros in Their Executive Ranks
Many things have changed since 2018, such as the names of the companies in the Fortune 100 list. But one aspect of that vaunted list that hasnt shifted much since is that very few of these companies list any security professionals within their top executive ranks. The next time you receive a brea...
Top Suspect in 2015 Ashley Madison Hack Committed Suicide in 2014
When the marital infidelity website AshleyMadison.com learned in July 2015 that hackers were threatening to publish data stolen from 37 million users, the companys then-CEO Noel Biderman was quick to point the finger at an unnamed former contractor. But as a new documentary series on Hulu reveals...
New Ransom Payment Schemes Target Executives, Telemedicine
Ransomware groups are constantly devising new methods for infecting victims and convincing them to pay up, but a couple of strategies tested recently seem especially devious. The first centers on targeting healthcare organizations that offer consultations over the Internet and sending them...
Disneyland Malware Team: It’s a Puny World After All
A financial cybercrime group calling itself the Disneyland Team has been making liberal use of visually confusing phishing domains that spoof popular bank brands using Punycode, an Internet standard that allows web browsers to render domain names with non-Latin alphabets like Cyrillic. The...
What Counts as “Good Faith Security Research?”
The U.S. Department of Justice DOJ recently revised its policy on charging violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act CFAA, a 1986 law that remains the primary statute by which federal prosecutors pursue cybercrime cases. The new guidelines state that prosecutors should avoid charging securit...
Your Phone May Soon Replace Many of Your Passwords
Apple, Google and Microsoft announced this week they will soon support an approach to authentication that avoids passwords altogether, and instead requires users to merely unlock their smartphones to sign in to websites or online services. Experts say the changes should help defeat many types of...
Conti’s Ransomware Toll on the Healthcare Industry
Conti -- one of the most ruthless and successful Russian ransomware groups -- publicly declared during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that it would refrain from targeting healthcare providers. But new information confirms this pledge was always a lie, and that Conti has launched more than 20...
‘Spam Nation’ Villain Vrublevsky Charged With Fraud
Pavel Vrublevsky, founder of the Russian payment technology firm ChronoPay and the antagonist in my 2014 book "Spam Nation," was arrested in Moscow this month and charged with fraud. Russian authorities allege Vrublevsky operated several fraudulent SMS-based payment schemes, and facilitated money...
Conti Ransomware Group Diaries, Part IV: Cryptocrime
Three stories here last week pored over several years’ worth of internal chat records stolen from the Conti ransomware group, the most profitable ransomware gang in operation today. The candid messages revealed how Conti evaded law enforcement and intelligence agencies, what it was like on a...