Courts Hand Down Hard Jail Time for DDoS

Seldom do people responsible for launching crippling cyberattacks face justice, but increasingly courts around the world are making examples of the few who do get busted for such crimes. On Friday, a 34-year-old Connecticut man received a whopping 10-year prison sentence for carrying out...

Bomb Threat Hoaxer, DDos Boss Gets 3 Years

The ringleader of a gang of cyber hooligans that made bomb threats against hundreds of schools and launched distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks against Web sites -- including KrebsOnSecurity on multiple occasions -- has been sentenced to three years in a U.K. prison, and faces the...

ExxonMobil Bungles Rewards Card Debut

Energy giant ExxonMobil recently sent snail mail letters to its Plenti rewards card members stating that the points program was being replaced with a new one called Exxon Mobil Rewards+. Unfortunately, the letter includes a confusing toll free number and directs customers to a parked page that...

Serial SWATter Tyler “SWAuTistic” Barriss Charged with Involuntary Manslaughter

Tyler Raj Barriss, a 25-year-old serial "swatter" whose phony emergency call to Kansas police last month triggered a fatal shooting, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and faces up to eleven years in prison. Tyler Raj Barriss, in an undated selfie. Barriss's online alias -- "SWAuTisti...

Riding the State Unemployment Fraud ‘Wave’

When a reliable method of scamming money out of people, companies or governments becomes widely known, underground forums and chat networks tend to light up with activity as more fraudsters pile on to claim their share. And that's exactly what appears to be going on right now as multiple U.S...

The Case for Limiting Your Browser Extensions

Last week, KrebsOnSecurity reported to health insurance provider Blue Shield of California that its Web site was flagged by multiple security products as serving malicious content. Blue Shield quickly removed the unauthorized code. An investigation determined it was injected by a browser extensio...

Should Failing Phish Tests Be a Fireable Offense?

Would your average Internet user be any more vigilant against phishing scams if he or she faced the real possibility of losing their job after falling for one too many of these emails? Recently, I met someone at a conference who said his employer had in fact terminated employees for such repeated...

Feds Target $100M ‘GozNym’ Cybercrime Network

Law enforcement agencies in the United States and Europe today unsealed charges against 11 alleged members of the GozNym malware network, an international cybercriminal syndicate suspected of stealing $100 million from more than 41,000 victims with the help of a stealthy banking trojan by the sam...

A Tough Week for IP Address Scammers

In the early days of the Internet, there was a period when Internet Protocol version 4 IPv4 addresses e.g. 4.4.4.4 were given out like cotton candy to anyone who asked. But these days companies are queuing up to obtain new IP space from the various regional registries that periodically dole out t...

Credit Card Breach at Kmart Stores. Again.

For the second time in less than three years, Kmart Stores is battling a malware-based security breach of its store credit card processing systems. Last week I began hearing from smaller banks and credit unions who said they strongly suspected another card breach at Kmart. Some of those...

Patch Tuesday, May 2024 Edition

Microsoft today released updates to fix more than 60 security holes in Windows computers and supported software, including two "zero-day" vulnerabilities in Windows that are already being exploited in active attacks. There are also important security patches available for macOS and Adobe users, a...

MyEquifax.com Bypasses Credit Freeze PIN

Most people who have frozen their credit files with Equifax have been issued a numeric Personal Identification Number PIN which is supposed to be required before a freeze can be lifted or thawed. Unfortunately, if you don't already have an account at the credit bureau's new myEquifax portal, it m...

GovPayNow.com Leaks 14M+ Records

Government Payment Service Inc. — a company used by thousands of U.S. state and local governments to accept online payments for everything from traffic citations and licensing fees to bail payments and court-ordered fines — has leaked more than 14 million customer records dating back at least six...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, June 2018 Edition

Microsoft today pushed out a bevy of software updates to fix more than four dozen security holes in Windows and related software. Almost a quarter of the vulnerabilities addressed in this month's patch batch earned Microsoft's "critical" rating, meaning malware or miscreants can exploit the flaws...

Money Laundering Via Author Impersonation on Amazon?

Patrick Reames had no idea why Amazon.com sent him a 1099 form saying he'd made almost $24,000 selling books via Createspace, the company's on-demand publishing arm. That is, until he searched the site for his name and discovered someone has been using it to peddle a $555 book that's full of...

Source: Deloitte Breach Affected All Company Email, Admin Accounts

Deloitte, one of the world's "big four" accounting firms, has acknowledged a breach of its internal email systems, British news outlet The Guardian revealed today. Deloitte has sought to downplay the incident, saying it impacted "very few" clients. But according to a source close to the...

Is Your Mobile Carrier Your Weakest Link?

More online services than ever now offer two-step authentication -- requiring customers to complete a login using their phone or other mobile device after supplying a username and password. But with so many services relying on your mobile for that second factor, there has never been more riding o...

Blowing the Whistle on Bad Attribution

The New York Times this week published a fascinating story about a young programmer in Ukraine who'd turned himself in to the local police. The Times says the man did so after one of his software tools was identified by the U.S. government as part of the arsenal used by Russian hackers suspected ...

Notorious Malware, Spam Host “Prospero” Moves to Kaspersky Lab

One of the most notorious providers of abuse-friendly "bulletproof" web hosting for cybercriminals has started routing its operations through networks run by the Russian antivirus and security firm Kaspersky Lab , KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Security experts say the Russia-based service provider...

PlugwalkJoe Does the Perp Walk

Joseph "PlugwalkJoe" OConnor, in a photo from a paid press release on Sept. 02, 2020, pitching him as a trustworthy cryptocurrency expert and advisor. One day after last summers mass-hack of Twitter, KrebsOnSecurity wrote that 22-year-old British citizen Joseph "PlugwalkJoe" OConnor appeared to...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, May 2020 Edition

Microsoft today issued software updates to plug at least 111 security holes in Windows and Windows-based programs. None of the vulnerabilities were labeled as being publicly exploited or detailed prior to today, but as always if you're running Windows on any of your machines it's time once again ...

SEC Investigating Data Leak at First American Financial Corp.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission SEC is investigating a security failure on the Web site of real estate title insurance giant First American Financial Corp. that exposed more than 885 million personal and financial records tied to mortgage deals going back to 2003, KrebsOnSecurity has...

Tracking Firm LocationSmart Leaked Location Data for Customers of All Major U.S. Mobile Carriers Without Consent in Real Time Via Its Web Site

LocationSmart, a U.S. based company that acts as an aggregator of real-time data about the precise location of mobile phone devices, has been leaking this information to anyone via a buggy component of its Web site -- without the need for any password or other form of authentication or...

‘Petya’ Ransomware Outbreak Goes Global

A new strain of ransomware dubbed "Petya" is worming its way around the world with alarming speed. The malware is spreading using a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that the software giant patched in March 2017 -- the same bug that was exploited by the recent and prolific WannaCry ransomware...

Canadian Man Pleads Guilty in Snowflake Extortions

A 26-year-old Canadian man once described as one of the most consequential cybercrime threat actors of 2024 has pleaded guilty to computer fraud and conspiracy to hack and extort more than 165 organizations that used the cloud provider Snowflake. Connor Riley Moucka , of Kitchener, Ontario, also...

Convicted SIM Swapper Gets 3 Years in Jail

A 21-year-old Irishman who pleaded guilty to charges of helping to steal millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies from victims has been sentenced to just under three years in prison. The defendant is part of an alleged conspiracy involving at least eight others in the United States who stand accus...

Cybersecurity Firm Imperva Discloses Breach

Imperva, a leading provider of Internet firewall services that help Web sites block malicious cyberattacks, alerted customers on Tuesday that a recent data breach exposed email addresses, scrambled passwords, API keys and SSL certificates for a subset of its firewall users. Redwood Shores,...

First American Financial Corp. Leaked Hundreds of Millions of Title Insurance Records

The Web site for Fortune 500 real estate title insurance giant First American Financial Corp. NYSE:FAF leaked hundreds of millions of documents related to mortgage deals going back to 2003, until notified this week by KrebsOnSecurity. The digitized records -- including bank account numbers and...

Hackers Sell Access to Bait-and-Switch Empire

Cybercriminals are auctioning off access to customer information stolen from an online data broker behind a dizzying array of bait-and-switch Web sites that sell access to a vast range of data on U.S. consumers, including DMV and arrest records, genealogy reports, phone number lookups and people...

Dirt-Cheap, Legit, Windows Software: Pick Two

Buying heavily discounted, popular software from second-hand sources online has always been something of an iffy security proposition. But purchasing steeply discounted licenses for cloud-based subscription products like recent versions of Microsoft Office can be an extremely risky transaction,...

Calif. Man Pleads Guilty in Fatal Swatting Case, Faces 20+ Years in Prison

A California man who pleaded guilty Tuesday to causing dozens of swatting attacks -- including a deadly incident in Kansas last year -- now faces 20 or more years in prison. Tyler Raj Barriss, in an undated selfie. Tyler Barriss, 25, went by the nickname SWAuTistic on Twitter, and reveled in...

Alleged ‘Satori’ IoT Botnet Operator Sought Media Spotlight, Got Indicted

A 20-year-old from Vancouver, Washington was indicted last week on federal hacking charges and for allegedly operating the "Satori" botnet, a malware strain unleashed last year that infected hundreds of thousands of wireless routers and other "Internet of Things" IoT devices. This outcome is hard...

Notorious ‘Hijack Factory’ Shunned from Web

Score one for the good guys: Bitcanal, a Portuguese Web hosting firm long accused of helping spammers hijack large swaths of dormant Internet address space over the years, was summarily kicked off the Internet this week after a half-dozen of the company's bandwidth providers chose to sever ties...

Trump Hotels Hit By 3rd Card Breach in 2 Years

Maybe some of you missed this amid all the breach news recently I know I did, but Trump International Hotels Management LLC last week announced its third credit-card data breach in the past two years. I thought it might be useful to see these events plotted on a timeline, because it suggests that...

Fat Patch Tuesday, February 2024 Edition

Microsoft Corp. today pushed software updates to plug more than 70 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related products, including two zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited in active attacks. Top of the heap on this Fat Patch Tuesday is CVE-2024-21412, a...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, December 2022 Edition

Microsoft has released its final monthly batch of security updates for 2022, fixing more than four dozen security holes in its various Windows operating systems and related software. The most pressing patches include a zero-day in a Windows feature that tries to flag malicious files from the Web,...

Joker’s Stash Carding Market to Call it Quits

Jokers Stash, by some accounts the largest underground shop for selling stolen credit card and identity data, says its closing up shop effective mid-February 2021. The announcement came on the heels of a turbulent year for the major cybercrime store, and just weeks after U.S. and European...

Tricky Phish Angles for Persistence, Not Passwords

Late last year saw the re-emergence of a nasty phishing tactic that allows the attacker to gain full access to a user's data stored in the cloud without actually stealing the account password. The phishing lure starts with a link that leads to the real login page for a cloud email and/or file...

No Jail Time for “WannaCry Hero”

Marcus Hutchins, the "accidental hero" who helped arrest the spread of the global WannaCry ransomware outbreak in 2017, will receive no jail time for his admitted role in authoring and selling malware that helped cyberthieves steal online bank account credentials from victims, a federal judge rul...

Voice Phishing Scams Are Getting More Clever

Most of us have been trained to be wary of clicking on links and attachments that arrive in emails unexpected, but it's easy to forget scam artists are constantly dreaming up innovations that put a new shine on old-fashioned telephone-based phishing scams. Think you're too smart to fall for one?...

Researcher Finds Credentials for 92 Million Users of DNA Testing Firm MyHeritage

MyHeritage, an Israeli-based genealogy and DNA testing company, disclosed today that a security researcher found on the Internet a file containing the email addresses and hashed passwords of more than 92 million of its users. MyHeritage says it has no reason to believe other user data was...

New EU Privacy Law May Weaken Security

Companies around the globe are scrambling to comply with new European privacy regulations that take effect a little more than three months from now. But many security experts are worried that the changes being ushered in by the rush to adhere to the law may make it more difficult to track down...

Drugs Tripped Up Suspects In First Known ATM “Jackpotting” Attacks in the US

On Jan. 27, 2018, KrebsOnSecurity published what this author thought was a scoop about the first known incidence of U.S. ATMs being hit with "jackpotting" attacks, a crime in which thieves deploy malware that forces cash machines to spit out money like a loose Las Vegas slot machine. As it happen...

Fear the Reaper, or Reaper Madness?

Last week we looked at reports from China and Israel about a new "Internet of Things" malware strain called "Reaper" that researchers said infected more than a million organizations by targeting newfound security weaknesses in countless Internet routers, security cameras and digital video recorde...

Here’s What to Ask the Former Equifax CEO

Richard Smith -- who resigned as chief executive of big-three credit bureau Equifax this week in the wake of a data breach that exposed 143 million Social Security numbers -- is slated to testify in front of no fewer than four committees on Capitol Hill next week. If I were a lawmaker, here are...

911 Proxy Service Implodes After Disclosing Breach

The 911 service as it existed until July 28, 2022. 911.re, a proxy service that since 2015 has sold access to hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Windows computers daily, announced this week that it is shutting down in the wake of a data breach that destroyed key components of its business...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, March 2022 Edition

Microsoft on Tuesday released software updates to plug at least 70 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related software. For the second month running, there are no scary zero-day threats looming for Windows users, and relatively few "critical" fixes. And yet we know from experienc...

Red Cross Hack Linked to Iranian Influence Operation?

A network intrusion at the International Committee for the Red Cross ICRC in January led to the theft of personal information on more than 500,000 people receiving assistance from the group. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that the email address used by a cybercriminal actor who offered to sell the...

A Closer Look at the DarkSide Ransomware Gang

The FBI confirmed this week that a relatively new ransomware group known as DarkSide is responsible for an attack that caused Colonial Pipeline to shut down 5,550 miles of pipe, stranding countless barrels of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel on the Gulf Coast. Heres a closer look at the DarkSide...

Alleged Member of Neo-Nazi Swatting Group Charged

Federal investigators on Friday arrested a Virginia man accused of being part of a neo-Nazi group that targeted hundreds of people in "swatting" attacks, wherein fake bomb threats, hostage situations and other violent scenarios were phoned in to police as part of a scheme to trick them into...