Internet Backbone Giant Lumen Shuns .RU

Lumen Technologies, an American company that operates one of the largest Internet backbones and carries a significant percentage of the worlds Internet traffic, said today it will stop routing traffic for organizations based in Russia. Lumens decision comes just days after a similar exit by...

How Phishers Are Slinking Their Links Into LinkedIn

If you received a link to LinkedIn.com via email, SMS or instant message, would you click it? Spammers, phishers and other neer-do-wells are hoping you will, because theyve long taken advantage of a marketing feature on the business networking site which lets them create a LinkedIn.com link that...

‘Tis the Season for the Wayward Package Phish

The holiday shopping season always means big business for phishers, who tend to find increased success this time of year with a lure about a wayward package that needs redelivery. Heres a look at a fairly elaborate SMS-based phishing scam that spoofs FedEx in a bid to extract personal and financi...

A Basic Timeline of the Exchange Mass-Hack

Sometimes when a complex story takes us by surprise or knocks us back on our heels, it pays to revisit the events in a somewhat linear fashion. Heres a brief timeline of what we know leading up to last weeks mass-hack, when hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Exchange Server systems got compromise...

Confessions of an ID Theft Kingpin, Part II

Yesterdays piece told the tale of Hieu Minh Ngo, a hacker the U.S. Secret Service described as someone who caused more material financial harm to more Americans than any other convicted cybercriminal. Ngo was recently deported back to his home country after serving more than seven years in prison...

Gas Pump Skimmer Sends Card Data Via Text

Skimming devices that crooks install inside fuel station gas pumps frequently rely on an embedded Bluetooth component allowing thieves to collect stolen credit card data from the pumps wirelessly with any mobile device. The downside of this approach is that Bluetooth-based skimmers can be detecte...

Cloudflare Scrubs Aisuru Botnet from Top Domains List

For the past week, domains associated with the massive Aisuru botnet have repeatedly usurped Amazon , Apple , Google and Microsoft in Cloudflare's public ranking of the most frequently requested websites. Cloudflare responded by redacting Aisuru domain names from their top websites list. The chie...

Feds Charge Five Men in ‘Scattered Spider’ Roundup

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles this week unsealed criminal charges against five men alleged to be members of a hacking group responsible for dozens of cyber intrusions at major U.S. technology companies between 2021 and 2023, including LastPass , MailChimp , Okta , T-Mobile and Twilio. A visu...

Owners of 1-Time Passcode Theft Service Plead Guilty

Three men in the United Kingdom have pleaded guilty to operating otp.agency , a once popular online service that helped attackers intercept the one-time passcodes OTPs that many websites require as a second authentication factor in addition to passwords. Launched in November 2019, OTP Agency was ...

Crooks Bypassed Google’s Email Verification to Create Workspace Accounts, Access 3rd-Party Services

Google says it recently fixed an authentication weakness that allowed crooks to circumvent the email verification required to create a Google Workspace account, and leverage that to impersonate a domain holder at third-party services that allow logins through Googles "Sign in with Google" feature...

Researchers: Weak Security Defaults Enabled Squarespace Domains Hijacks

At least a dozen organizations with domain names at domain registrar Squarespace saw their websites hijacked last week. Squarespace bought all assets of Google Domains a year ago, but many customers still havent set up their new accounts. Experts say malicious hackers learned they could commandee...

Using Google Search to Find Software Can Be Risky

Google continues to struggle with cybercriminals running malicious ads on its search platform to trick people into downloading booby-trapped copies of popular free software applications. The malicious ads, which appear above organic search results and often precede links to legitimate sources of...

Here’s Some Bitcoin: Oh, and You’ve Been Served!

A California man who lost $100,000 in a 2021 SIM-swapping attack is suing the unknown holder of a cryptocurrency wallet that harbors his stolen funds. The case is thought to be the first in which a federal court has recognized the use of information included in a bitcoin transaction -- such as a...

Russian Cybersecurity Executive Arrested for Alleged Role in 2012 Megahacks

Nikita Kislitsin, formerly the head of network security for one of Russias top cybersecurity firms, was arrested last week in Kazakhstan in response to 10-year-old hacking charges from the U.S. Department of Justice. Experts say Kislitsins prosecution could soon put the Kazakhstan government in a...

Giving a Face to the Malware Proxy Service ‘Faceless’

For the past seven years, a malware-based proxy service known as "Faceless" has sold anonymity to countless cybercriminals. For less than a dollar per day, Faceless customers can route their malicious traffic through tens of thousands of compromised systems advertised on the service. In this post...

Why is ‘Juice Jacking’ Suddenly Back in the News?

KrebsOnSecurity received a nice bump in traffic this week thanks to tweets from the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI and the Federal Communications Commission FCC about "juice jacking," a term first coined here in 2011 to describe a potential threat of data theft when one plugs their mobile...

Thinking of Hiring or Running a Booter Service? Think Again.

Most people who operate DDoS-for-hire businesses attempt to hide their true identities and location. Proprietors of these so-called "booter" or "stresser" services -- designed to knock websites and users offline -- have long operated in a legally murky area of cybercrime law. But until recently,...

The Original APT: Advanced Persistent Teenagers

Many organizations are already struggling to combat cybersecurity threats from ransomware purveyors and state-sponsored hacking groups, both of which tend to take days or weeks to pivot from an opportunistic malware infection to a full blown data breach. But few organizations have a playbook for...

Conti Ransomware Group Diaries, Part II: The Office

Earlier this week, a Ukrainian security researcher leaked almost two years worth of internal chat logs from Conti, one of the more rapacious and ruthless ransomware gangs in operation today. Tuesdays story examined how Conti dealt with its own internal breaches and attacks from private security...

Norton 360 Now Comes With a Cryptominer

Norton 360, one of the most popular antivirus products on the market today, has installed a cryptocurrency mining program on its customers computers. Nortons parent firm says the cloud-based service that activates the program and allows customers to profit from the scheme -- in which the company...

Conti Ransom Gang Starts Selling Access to Victims

The Conti ransomware affiliate program appears to have altered its business plan recently. Organizations infected with Contis malware who refuse to negotiate a ransom payment are added to Contis victim shaming blog, where confidential files stolen from victims may be published or sold. But someti...

15-Year-Old Malware Proxy Network VIP72 Goes Dark

Over the past 15 years, a cybercrime anonymity service known as VIP72 has enabled countless fraudsters to mask their true location online by routing their traffic through millions of malware-infected systems. But roughly two weeks ago, VIP72s online storefront -- which ironically enough has...

CISO MAG Honors KrebsOnSecurity

CISO MAG, a publication dedicated to covering issues near and dear to corporate chief information security officers everywhere, has graciously awarded this author the designation of "Cybersecurity Person of the Year" in its December 2019 issue. KrebsOnSecurity is grateful for the unexpected honor...

Felons, Fraudsters Flog Offensive Cybersecurity Startup

A cybersecurity startup dangling millions of dollars to acquire zero-day security vulnerabilities in popular software is run by a pair of far-right conspiracy theorists and convicted felons whose most recent ventures included fake intelligence companies and a now-defunct AI-based lobbying platfor...

Alleged Kimwolf Botmaster ‘Dort’ Arrested, Charged in U.S. and Canada

Canadian authorities on Wednesday arrested a 23-year-old Ottawa man on suspicion of building and operating Kimwolf , a fast spreading Internet-of-Things botnet that enslaved millions of devices for use in a series of massive distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks over the past six months...

Patch Tuesday, February 2026 Edition

Microsoft today released updates to fix more than 50 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, including patches for a whopping six "zero-day" vulnerabilities that attackers are already exploiting in the wild. Zero-day 1 this month is CVE-2026-21510, a security feature...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, December 2025 Edition

Microsoft today pushed updates to fix at least 56 security flaws in its Windows operating systems and supported software. This final Patch Tuesday of 2025 tackles one zero-day bug that is already being exploited, as well as two publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. Despite releasing a...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, August 2025 Edition

Microsoft today released updates to fix more than 100 security flaws in its Windows operating systems and other software. At least 13 of the bugs received Microsoft's most-dire "critical" rating, meaning they could be abused by malware or malcontents to gain remote access to a Windows system with...

Trump Revenge Tour Targets Cyber Leaders, Elections

President Trump last week revoked security clearances for Chris Krebs , the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA who was fired by Trump after declaring the 2020 election the most secure in U.S. history. The White House memo, which also suspended clearances...

How Each Pillar of the 1st Amendment is Under Attack

" Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." -U.S. Constitution,...

When Getting Phished Puts You in Mortal Danger

Many successful phishing attacks result in a financial loss or malware infection. But falling for some phishing scams, like those currently targeting Russians searching online for organizations that are fighting the Kremlin war machine, can cost you your freedom or your life. The real website of...

A Single Cloud Compromise Can Feed an Army of AI Sex Bots

Organizations that get relieved of credentials to their cloud environments can quickly find themselves part of a disturbing new trend: Cybercriminals using stolen cloud credentials to operate and resell sexualized AI-powered chat services. Researchers say these illicit chat bots, which use custom...

National Public Data Published Its Own Passwords

New details are emerging about a breach at National Public Data NPD, a consumer data broker that recently spilled hundreds of millions of Americans Social Security Numbers, addresses, and phone numbers online. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that another NPD data broker which shares access to the sam...

NationalPublicData.com Hack Exposes a Nation’s Data

A great many readers this month reported receiving alerts that their Social Security Number, name, address and other personal information were exposed in a breach at a little-known but aptly-named consumer data broker called NationalPublicData.com. This post examines what we know about a breach...

Thread Hijacking: Phishes That Prey on Your Curiosity

Thread hijacking attacks. They happen when someone you know has their email account compromised, and you are suddenly dropped into an existing conversation between the sender and someone else. These missives draw on the recipients natural curiosity about being copied on a private discussion, whic...

ID Theft Service Resold Access to USInfoSearch Data

One of the cybercrime undergrounds more active sellers of Social Security numbers, background and credit reports has been pulling data from hacked accounts at the U.S. consumer data broker USinfoSearch, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Since at least February 2023, a service advertised on Telegram...

Feds Take Down 13 More DDoS-for-Hire Services

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI this week seized 13 domain names connected to "booter" services that let paying customers launch crippling distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks. Ten of the domains are reincarnations of DDoS-for-hire services the FBI seized in December 2022, when...

FBI Seizes Bot Shop ‘Genesis Market’ Amid Arrests Targeting Operators, Suppliers

Several domain names tied to Genesis Market, a bustling cybercrime store that sold access to passwords and other data stolen from millions of computers infected with malicious software, were seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI today. The domain seizures coincided with more than a...

German Police Raid DDoS-Friendly Host ‘FlyHosting’

Authorities in Germany this week seized Internet servers that powered FlyHosting, a dark web offering that catered to cybercriminals operating DDoS-for-hire services, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. FlyHosting first advertised on cybercrime forums in November 2022, saying it was a Germany-based...

Two U.S. Men Charged in 2022 Hacking of DEA Portal

Two U.S. men have been charged with hacking into a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency DEA online portal that taps into 16 different federal law enforcement databases. Both are alleged to be part of a larger criminal organization that specializes in using fake emergency data requests from compromised...

Researchers Quietly Cracked Zeppelin Ransomware Keys

Peter is an IT manager for a technology manufacturer that got hit with a Russian ransomware strain called "Zeppelin" in May 2020. Hed been on the job less than six months, and because of the way his predecessor architected things, the companys data backups also were encrypted by Zeppelin. After t...

Scammers Sent Uber to Take Elderly Lady to the Bank

Email scammers sent an Uber to the home of an 80-year-old woman who responded to a well-timed email scam, in a bid to make sure she went to the bank and wired money to the fraudsters. In this case, the woman figured out she was being scammed before embarking for the bank, but her story is a...

Pro-Ukraine ‘Protestware’ Pushes Antiwar Ads, Geo-Targeted Malware

Researchers are tracking a number of open-source "protestware" projects on GitHub that have recently altered their code to display "Stand with Ukraine" messages for users, or basic facts about the carnage in Ukraine. The group also is tracking several code packages that were recently modified to...

Conti Ransomware Group Diaries, Part I: Evasion

A Ukrainian security researcher this week leaked several years of internal chat logs and other sensitive data tied to Conti, an aggressive and ruthless Russian cybercrime group that focuses on deploying its ransomware to companies with more than $100 million in annual revenue. The chat logs offer...

FCC Proposal Targets SIM Swapping, Port-Out Fraud

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission FCC is asking for feedback on new proposed rules to crack down on SIM swapping and number port-out fraud, increasingly prevalent scams in which identity thieves hijack a targets mobile phone number and use that to wrest control over the victims online...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, February 2018 Edition

Microsoft today released a bevy of security updates to tackle more than 50 serious weaknesses in Windows, Internet Explorer/Edge, Microsoft Office and Adobe Flash Player, among other products. A good number of the patches issued today ship with Microsoft's "critical" rating, meaning the problems...

Following the Money Hobbled vDOS Attack-for-Hire Service

A new report proves the value of following the money in the fight against dodgy cybercrime services known as "booters" or "stressers" -- virtual hired muscle that can be rented to knock nearly any website offline. Last fall, two 18-year-old Israeli men were arrested for allegedly running vDOS,...

Who Runs the Ransomware Group ‘The Gentlemen?’

A cybercrime group known as The Gentlemen has emerged as the second most active ransomware gang by victim count, rapidly attracting a talented pool of hackers through an aggressive recruitment strategy that promises affiliates 90 percent of any ransom paid by victims. This post examines clues...

Russia Hacked Routers to Steal Microsoft Office Tokens

Hackers linked to Russia's military intelligence units are using known flaws in older Internet routers to mass harvest authentication tokens from Microsoft Office users, security experts warned today. The spying campaign allowed state-backed Russian hackers to quietly siphon authentication tokens...

Patch Tuesday, January 2026 Edition

Microsoft today issued patches to plug at least 113 security holes in its various Windows operating systems and supported software. Eight of the vulnerabilities earned Microsoft's most-dire "critical" rating, and the company warns that attackers are already exploiting one of the bugs fixed today...