U.S. Sanctions Cloud Provider ‘Funnull’ as Top Source of ‘Pig Butchering’ Scams

Image: Shutterstock, ArtHead. The U.S. government today imposed economic sanctions on Funnull Technology Inc. , a Philippines-based company that provides computer infrastructure for hundreds of thousands of websites involved in virtual currency investment scams known as “pig butchering." In Janua...

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...

China-based SMS Phishing Triad Pivots to Banks

China-based purveyors of SMS phishing kits are enjoying remarkable success converting phished payment card data into mobile wallets from Apple and Google. Until recently, the so-called "Smishing Triad " mainly impersonated toll road operators and shipping companies. But experts say these groups a...

Infrastructure Laundering: Blending in with the Cloud

Image: Shutterstock, ArtHead. In an effort to blend in and make their malicious traffic tougher to block, hosting firms catering to cybercriminals in China and Russia increasingly are funneling their operations through major U.S. cloud providers. Research published this week on one such outfit --...

Booking.com Phishers May Leave You With Reservations

A number of cybercriminal innovations are making it easier for scammers to cash in on your upcoming travel plans. This story examines a recent spear-phishing campaign that ensued when a California hotel had its booking.com credentials stolen. We'll also explore an array of cybercrime services aim...

The Global Surveillance Free-for-All in Mobile Ad Data

Not long ago, the ability to digitally track someone’s daily movements just by knowing their home address, employer, or place of worship was considered a dangerous power that should remain only within the purview of nation states. But a new lawsuit in a likely constitutional battle over a New...

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...

Don’t Let Your Domain Name Become a “Sitting Duck”

More than a million domain names -- including many registered by Fortune 100 firms and brand protection companies -- are vulnerable to takeover by cybercriminals thanks to authentication weaknesses at a number of large web hosting providers and domain registrars, new research finds. Image:...

Man Who Mass-Extorted Psychotherapy Patients Gets Six Years

A 26-year-old Finnish man was sentenced to more than six years in prison today after being convicted of hacking into an online psychotherapy clinic, leaking tens of thousands of patient therapy records, and attempting to extort the clinic and patients. On October 21, 2020, the Vastaamo...

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...

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...

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,...

ConnectWise Quietly Patches Flaw That Helps Phishers

ConnectWise, which offers a self-hosted, remote desktop software application that is widely used by Managed Service Providers MSPs, is warning about an unusually sophisticated phishing attack that can let attackers take remote control over user systems when recipients click the included link. The...

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...

Russia to Rent Tech-Savvy Prisoners to Corporate IT?

Image: Proxima Studios, via Shutterstock. Faced with a brain drain of smart people fleeing the country following its invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Federation is floating a new strategy to address a worsening shortage of qualified information technology experts: Forcing tech-savvy people within...

Data: E-Retail Hacks More Lucrative Than Ever

For many years and until quite recently, credit card data stolen from online merchants has been worth far less in the cybercrime underground than cards pilfered from hacked brick-and-mortar stores. But new data suggests that over the past year, the economics of supply-and-demand have helped to...

Alleged Spam Kingpin ‘Severa’ Extradited to US

Peter Yuryevich Levashov, a 37-year-old Russian computer programmer thought to be one of the world's most notorious spam kingpins, has been extradited to the United States to face federal hacking and spamming charges. Levashov, in an undated photo. Levashov, who allegedly went by the hacker names...

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,...

Alleged Spam King Pyotr Levashov Arrested

Authorities in Spain have arrested a Russian computer programmer thought to be one of the world's most notorious spam kingpins. Spanish police arrested Pyotr Levashov under an international warrant executed in the city of Barcelona, according to Reuters. Russian state-run television station RT...

Lessons Learned from CISA’s Recent GitHub Leak

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA has issued a postmortem on a recent data leak in which a contractor published dozens of internal CISA credentials -- including AWS Govcloud keys -- in a public GitHub repository for almost six months before being notified by KrebsOnSecurit...

Lawmakers Demand Answers as CISA Tries to Contain Data Leak

Lawmakers in both houses of Congress are demanding answers from the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency CISA after KrebsOnSecurity reported this week that a CISA contractor intentionally published AWS GovCloud keys and a vast trove of other agency secrets on a public GitHub accoun...

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, 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...

FBI, Dutch Police Disrupt ‘Manipulaters’ Phishing Gang

The FBI and authorities in The Netherlands this week seized dozens of servers and domains for a hugely popular spam and malware dissemination service operating out of Pakistan. The proprietors of the service, who use the collective nickname "The Manipulaters ," have been the subject of three...

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 ...

Happy 14th Birthday, KrebsOnSecurity!

KrebsOnSecurity celebrates its 14th year of existence today! I promised myself this post wouldnt devolve into yet another Cybersecurity Year in Review. Nor do I wish to hold forth about whatever cyber horrors may await us in 2024. But I do want to thank you all for your continued readership,...

Re-Victimization from Police-Auctioned Cell Phones

Countless smartphones seized in arrests and searches by police forces across the United States are being auctioned online without first having the data on them erased, a practice that can lead to crime victims being re-victimized, a new study found. In response, the largest online marketplace for...

Battle with Bots Prompts Mass Purge of Amazon, Apple Employee Accounts on LinkedIn

On October 10, 2022, there were 576,562 LinkedIn accounts that listed their current employer as Apple Inc. The next day, half of those profiles no longer existed. A similarly dramatic drop in the number of LinkedIn profiles claiming employment at Amazon comes as LinkedIn is struggling to combat a...

When Efforts to Contain a Data Breach Backfire

Earlier this month, the administrator of the cybercrime forum Breached received a cease-and-desist letter from a cybersecurity firm. The missive alleged that an auction on the site for data stolen from 10 million customers of Mexicos second-largest bank was fake news and harming the banks...

State Govts. Warned of Malware-Laden CD Sent Via Snail Mail from China

Here's a timely reminder that email isn't the only vector for phishing attacks: Several U.S. state and local government agencies have reported receiving strange letters via snail mail that include malware-laden compact discs CDs apparently sent from China, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. This...

Is Facebook’s Anti-Abuse System Broken?

Facebook has built some of the most advanced algorithms for tracking users, but when it comes to acting on user abuse reports about Facebook groups and content that clearly violate the company's "community standards," the social media giant's technology appears to be woefully inadequate. Last wee...

The Market for Stolen Account Credentials

Past stories here have explored the myriad criminal uses of a hacked computer, the various ways that your inbox can be spliced and diced to help cybercrooks ply their trade, and the value of a hacked company. Today's post looks at the price of stolen credentials for just about any e-commerce, ban...

Tracing Spam: Diet Pills from Beltway Bandits

Reading junk spam messages isn't exactly my idea of a good time, but sometimes fun can be had when you take a moment to check who really sent the email. Here's the simple story of how a recent spam email advertising celebrity "diet pills" was traced back to a Washington, D.C.-area defense...

Patch Tuesday, April 2026 Edition

Microsoft today pushed software updates to fix a staggering 167 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and related software, including a SharePoint Server zero-day and a publicly disclosed weakness in Windows Defender dubbed "BlueHammer." Separately, Google Chrome fixed its...

Drones to Diplomas: How Russia’s Largest Private University is Linked to a $25M Essay Mill

A sprawling academic cheating network turbocharged by Google Ads that has generated nearly $25 million in revenue has curious ties to a Kremlin-connected oligarch whose Russian university builds drones for Russia's war against Ukraine. The Nerdify homepage. The link between essay mills and Russia...

DOGE to Fired CISA Staff: Email Us Your Personal Data

A message posted on Monday to the homepage of the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency CISA is the latest exhibit in the Trump administration's continued disregard for basic cybersecurity protections. The message instructed recently-fired CISA employees to get in touch so they can ...

The Fake Browser Update Scam Gets a Makeover

One of the oldest malware tricks in the book -- hacked websites claiming visitors need to update their Web browser before they can view any content -- has roared back to life in the past few months. New research shows the attackers behind one such scheme have developed an ingenious way of keeping...

UK Sets Up Fake Booter Sites To Muddy DDoS Market

The United Kingdoms National Crime Agency NCA has been busy setting up phony DDoS-for-hire websites that seek to collect information on users, remind them that launching DDoS attacks is illegal, and generally increase the level of paranoia for people looking to hire such services. The warning...

New Protections for Food Benefits Stolen by Skimmers

Millions of Americans receiving food assistance benefits just earned a new right that they cant yet enforce: The right to be reimbursed if funds on their Electronic Benefit Transfer EBT cards are stolen by card skimming devices secretly installed at cash machines and grocery store checkout lanes...

Violence-as-a-Service: Brickings, Firebombings & Shootings for Hire

A 21-year-old New Jersey man has been arrested and charged with stalking in connection with a federal investigation into groups of cybercriminals who are settling scores by hiring people to carry out physical attacks on their rivals. Prosecutors say the defendant recently participated in several ...

“Downthem” DDoS-for-Hire Boss Gets 2 Years in Prison

A 33-year-old Illinois man was sentenced to two years in prison today following his conviction last year for operating services that allowed paying customers to launch powerful distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks against hundreds of thousands of Internet users and websites. The user...

Lawmakers Probe Early Release of Top RU Cybercrook

Aleksei Burkov, seated second from right, attends a hearing in Jerusalem in 2015. Image: Andrei Shirokov / Tass via Getty Images. Aleksei Burkov, a cybercriminal who long operated two of Russias most exclusive underground hacking forums, was arrested in 2015 by Israeli authorities. The Russian...

Report: Recent 10x Increase in Cyberattacks on Ukraine

As their cities suffered more intense bombardment by Russian military forces this week, Ukrainian Internet users came under renewed cyberattacks, with one Internet company providing service there saying they blocked ten times the normal number of phishing and malware attacks targeting Ukrainians...

Inside Ireland’s Public Healthcare Ransomware Scare

The consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers recently published lessons learned from the disruptive and costly ransomware attack in May 2021 on Irelands public health system. The unusually candid post-mortem found that nearly two months elapsed between the initial intrusion and the launching of the...

The ‘Groove’ Ransomware Gang Was a Hoax

A number of publications in September warned about the emergence of "Groove," a new ransomware group that called on competing extortion gangs to unite in attacking U.S. government interests online. It now appears that Groove was all a big hoax designed to toy with security firms and journalists...

Wipro Intruders Targeted Other Major IT Firms

The crooks responsible for launching phishing campaigns that netted dozens of employees and more than 100 computer systems last month at Wipro, India's third-largest IT outsourcing firm, also appear to have targeted a number of other competing providers, including Infosys and Cognizant, new...

Buyers Beware of Tampered Gift Cards

Prepaid gift cards make popular presents and no-brainer stocking stuffers, but before you purchase one be on the lookout for signs that someone may have tampered with it. A perennial scam that picks up around the holidays involves thieves who pull back and then replace the decals that obscure the...

Mirai IoT Botnet Co-Authors Plead Guilty

The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday unsealed the guilty pleas of two men first identified in January 2017 by KrebsOnSecurity as the likely co-authors of Mirai, a malware strain that remotely enslaves so-called "Internet of Things" devices such as security cameras, routers, and digital video...

Former NSA Employee Pleads Guilty to Taking Classified Data

A former employee for the National Security Agency pleaded guilty on Friday to taking classified data to his home computer in Maryland. According to published reports, U.S. intelligence officials believe the data was then stolen from his computer by hackers working for the Russian government. Ngh...

UK Man Gets Two Years in Jail for Running ‘Titanium Stresser’ Attack-for-Hire Service

A 20-year-old man from the United Kingdom was sentenced to two years in prison today after admitting to operating and selling access to "Titanium Stresser," a simple-to-use service that let paying customers launch crippling online attacks against Web sites and individual Internet users. Adam Mudd...