When Security Researchers Pose as Cybercrooks, Who Can Tell the Difference?

A ridiculous number of companies are exposing some or all of their proprietary and customer data by putting it in the cloud without any kind of authentication needed to read, alter or destroy it. When cybercriminals are the first to discover these missteps, usually the outcome is a demand for mon...

Librarian Sues Equifax Over 2017 Data Breach, Wins $600

In the days following revelations last September that big-three consumer credit bureau Equifax had been hacked and relieved of personal data on nearly 150 million people, many Americans no doubt felt resigned and powerless to control their information. But not Jessamyn West. The 49-year-old...

What Is Your Bank’s Security Banking On?

A large number of banks, credit unions and other financial institutions just pushed customers onto new e-banking platforms that asked them to reset their account passwords by entering a username plus some other static identifier -- such as the first six digits of their Social Security number SSN,...

DDoS-for-Hire Service Launches Mobile App

In May 2013 KrebsOnSecurity wrote about Ragebooter, a service that paying customers can use to launch powerful distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks capable of knocking individuals and Web sites offline. The owner of Ragebooter subsequently was convicted in 2016 of possessing child...

Tech Firms Team Up to Take Down ‘WireX’ Android DDoS Botnet

A half dozen technology and security companies -- some of them competitors -- issued the exact same press release today. This unusual level of cross-industry collaboration caps a successful effort to dismantle 'WireX,' an extraordinary new crime machine comprising tens of thousands of hacked...

Adobe, Microsoft Push Critical Security Fixes

It's Patch Tuesday, again. That is, if you run Microsoft Windows or Adobe products. Microsoft issued a dozen patch bundles to fix at least 54 security flaws in Windows and associated software. Separately, Adobe's got a new version of its Flash Player available that addresses at least three...

Who’s Behind the Botnet-Based Service BHProxies?

A security firm has discovered that a six-year-old crafty botnet known as Mylobot appears to be powering a residential proxy service called BHProxies, which offers paying customers the ability to route their web traffic anonymously through compromised computers. Heres a closer look at Mylobot, an...

Intuit to Share Payroll Data from 1.4M Small Businesses With Equifax

Financial services giant Intuit this week informed 1.4 million small businesses using its QuickBooks Online Payroll and Intuit Online Payroll products that their payroll information will be shared with big-three consumer credit bureau Equifax starting later this year unless customers opt out by t...

U.S. Secret Service Warns ID Thieves are Abusing USPS’s Mail Scanning Service

A year ago, KrebsOnSecurity warned that "Informed Delivery," a new offering from the U.S. Postal Service USPS that lets residents view scanned images of all incoming mail, was likely to be abused by identity thieves and other fraudsters unless the USPS beefed up security around the program and ma...

Coinhive Exposé Prompts Cancer Research Fundraiser

A story published here this week revealed the real-life identity behind the original creator of Coinhive -- a controversial cryptocurrency mining service that several security firms have recently labeled the most ubiquitous malware threat on the Internet today. In an unusual form of protest again...

Survey: Americans Spent $1.4B on Credit Freeze Fees in Wake of Equifax Breach

Almost 20 percent of Americans froze their credit file with one or more of the big three credit bureaus in the wake of last year's data breach at Equifax, costing consumers an estimated $1.4 billion, according to a new study. The findings come as lawmakers in Congress are debating legislation tha...

15-Year-old Finds Flaw in Ledger Crypto Wallet

A 15-year-old security researcher has discovered a serious flaw in cryptocurrency hardware wallets made by Ledger, a French company whose popular products are designed to physically safeguard public and private keys used to receive or spend the user’s cryptocurrencies. Ledger's Nano-S...

Reaper: Calm Before the IoT Security Storm?

It's been just over a year since the world witnessed some of the world's top online Web sites being taken down for much of the day by "Mirai," a zombie malware strain that enslaved "Internet of Things" IoT devices such as wireless routers, security cameras and digital video recorders for use in...

April’s Patch Tuesday Brings Record Number of Fixes

If only Patch Tuesdays came around infrequently -- like total solar eclipse rare -- instead of just creeping up on us each month like The Man in the Moon. Although to be fair, it would be tough for Microsoft to eclipse the number of vulnerabilities fixed in this months patch batch -- a record 147...

Barracuda Urges Replacing — Not Patching — Its Email Security Gateways

Its not often that a zero-day vulnerability causes a network security vendor to urge customers to physically remove and decommission an entire line of affected hardware -- as opposed to just applying software updates. But experts say that is exactly what transpired this week with Barracuda...

Boss of ATM Skimming Syndicate Arrested in Mexico

Florian "The Shark" Tudor, the alleged ringleader of a prolific ATM skimming gang that siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars from bank accounts of tourists visiting Mexico over the last eight years, was arrested in Mexico City on Thursday in response to an extradition warrant from a Romanian...

Apple Explains Mysterious iPhone 11 Location Requests

KrebsOnSecurity ran a story this week that puzzled over Apple's response to inquiries about a potential privacy leak in its new iPhone 11 line, in which the devices appear to intermittently seek the user's location even when all applications and system services are individually set never to reque...

Attackers Exploiting Unpatched Flaw in Flash

Adobe warned on Thursday that attackers are exploiting a previously unknown security hole in its Flash Player software to break into Microsoft Windows computers. Adobe said it plans to issue a fix for the flaw in the next few days, but now might be a good time to check your exposure to this...

Correcting the Record on vDOS Prosecutions

KrebsOnSecurity recently featured a story about a New Mexico man who stands accused of using the now-defunct vDOS attack-for-hire service to hobble the Web sites of several former employers. That piece stated that I wasn't aware of any other prosecutions related to vDOS customers, but as it happe...

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...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, May 2023 Edition

Microsoft today released software updates to fix at least four dozen security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, including patches for two zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited in active attacks. First up in Mays zero-day flaws is CVE-2023-29336, which ...

Sued by Meta, Freenom Halts Domain Registrations

The domain name registrar Freenom, whose free domain names have long been a draw for spammers and phishers, has stopped allowing new domain name registrations. The move comes after the Dutch registrar was sued by Meta, which alleges the company ignores abuse complaints about phishing websites whi...

T-Mobile Investigating Claims of Massive Data Breach

Communications giant T-Mobile said today it is investigating the extent of a breach that hackers claim has exposed sensitive personal data on 100 million T-Mobile USA customers, in many cases including the name, Social Security number, address, date of birth, phone number, security PINs and detai...

Spam Kingpin Peter Levashov Gets Time Served

Peter Levashov, appearing via Zoom at his sentencing hearing today. A federal judge in Connecticut today handed down a sentence of time served to spam kingpin Peter “Severa” Levashov, a prolific purveyor of malicious and junk email, and the creator of malware strains that infected millions of...

At Least 30,000 U.S. Organizations Newly Hacked Via Holes in Microsoft’s Email Software

At least 30,000 organizations across the United States -- including a significant number of small businesses, towns, cities and local governments -- have over the past few days been hacked by an unusually aggressive Chinese cyber espionage unit thats focused on stealing email from victim...

Two Russians Charged in $17M Cryptocurrency Phishing Spree

U.S. authorities today announced criminal charges and financial sanctions against two Russian men accused of stealing nearly $17 million worth of virtual currencies in a series of phishing attacks throughout 2017 and 2018 that spoofed websites for some of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges...

Pay Up, Or We’ll Make Google Ban Your Ads

A new email-based extortion scheme apparently is making the rounds, targeting Web site owners serving banner ads through Google's AdSense program. In this scam, the fraudsters demand bitcoin in exchange for a promise not to flood the publisher's ads with so much bot and junk traffic that Google's...

Nuclear Bot Author Arrested in Sextortion Case

Last summer, a wave of sextortion emails began flooding inboxes around the world. The spammers behind this scheme claimed they'd hacked your computer and recorded videos of you watching porn, and promised to release the embarrassing footage to all your contacts unless a bitcoin demand was paid...

Browser Extensions: Are They Worth the Risk?

Popular file-sharing site Mega.nz is warning users that cybercriminals hacked its browser extension for Google Chrome so that usernames and passwords submitted through the browser were copied and forwarded to a rogue server in Ukraine. This attack serves as a fresh reminder that legitimate browse...

Google: Security Keys Neutralized Employee Phishing

Google has not had any of its 85,000+ employees successfully phished on their work-related accounts since early 2017, when it began requiring all employees to use physical Security Keys in place of passwords and one-time codes, the company told KrebsOnSecurity. A YubiKey Security Key made by...

Kansas Man Killed In ‘SWATting’ Attack

A 28-year-old Kansas man was shot and killed by police officers on the evening of Dec. 28 after someone fraudulently reported a hostage situation ongoing at his home. The false report was the latest in a dangerous hoax known as "swatting," wherein the perpetrator falsely reports a dangerous...

Fulton County, Security Experts Call LockBit’s Bluff

The ransomware group LockBit told officials with Fulton County, Ga. they could expect to see their internal documents published online this morning unless the county paid a ransom demand. LockBit removed Fulton Countys listing from its victim shaming website this morning, claiming the county had...

DEA Investigating Breach of Law Enforcement Data Portal

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration DEA says it is investigating reports that hackers gained unauthorized access to an agency portal that taps into 16 different federal law enforcement databases. KrebsOnSecurity has learned the alleged compromise is tied to a cybercrime and online harassment...

Try This One Weird Trick Russian Hackers Hate

In a Twitter discussion last week on ransomware attacks, KrebsOnSecurity noted that virtually all ransomware strains have a built-in failsafe designed to cover the backsides of the malware purveyors: They simply will not install on a Microsoft Windows computer that already has one of many types o...

‘ValidCC,’ a Major Payment Card Bazaar and Looter of E-Commerce Sites, Shuttered

ValidCC, a dark web bazaar run by a cybercrime group that for more than six years hacked online merchants and sold stolen payment card data, abruptly closed up shop last week. The proprietors of the popular store said their servers were seized as part of a coordinated law enforcement operation...

DDoS-Guard To Forfeit Internet Space Occupied by Parler

Parler, the beleaguered social network advertised as a "free speech" alternative to Facebook and Twitter, has had a tough month. Apple and Google removed the Parler app from their stores, and Amazon blocked the platform from using its hosting services. Parler has since found a home in DDoS-Guard,...

Before He Spammed You, this Sly Prince Stalked Your Mailbox

A reader forwarded what he briefly imagined might be a bold, if potentially costly, innovation on the old Nigerian prince scam that asks for help squirreling away millions in unclaimed fortune: It was sent via the U.S. Postal Service, with a postmarked stamp and everything. In truth these old...

Email Provider VFEmail Suffers ‘Catastrophic’ Hack

Email provider VFEmail has suffered what the company is calling "catastrophic destruction" at the hands of an as-yet unknown intruder who trashed all of the company's primary and backup data in the United States. The firm's founder says he now fears some 18 years' worth of customer email may be...

Reddit Breach Highlights Limits of SMS-Based Authentication

Reddit.com today disclosed that a data breach exposed some internal data, as well as email addresses and passwords for some Reddit users. As Web site breaches go, this one doesn't seem too severe. What's interesting about the incident is that it showcases once again why relying on mobile text...

Checked Your Credit Since the Equifax Hack?

A recent consumer survey suggests that half of all Americans still haven't checked their credit report since the Equifax breach last year exposed the Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses and other personal information on nearly 150 million people. If you're in that fifty percent,...

Fear Not: You, Too, Are a Cybercrime Victim!

Maybe you've been feeling left out because you weren't among the lucky few hundred million or billion who had their personal information stolen in either the Equifax or Yahoo! breaches. Well buck up, camper: Both companies took steps to make you feel better today. Yahoo! announced that, our bad!:...

Patch Tuesday, October 2024 Edition

Microsoft today released security updates to fix at least 117 security holes in Windows computers and other software, including two vulnerabilities that are already seeing active attacks. Also, Adobe plugged 52 security holes across a range of products, and Apple has addressed a bug in its new...

Ransomware Gangs and the Name Game Distraction

Its nice when ransomware gangs have their bitcoin stolen, malware servers shut down, or are otherwise forced to disband. We hang on to these occasional victories because history tells us that most ransomware moneymaking collectives dont go away so much as reinvent themselves under a new name, wit...

U.S. Indicts North Korean Hackers in Theft of $200 Million

The U.S. Justice Department today unsealed indictments against three men accused of working with the North Korean regime to carry out some of the most damaging cybercrime attacks over the past decade, including the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures, the global WannaCry ransomware contagion of 2017, and...

Cachet Financial Reeling from MyPayrollHR Fraud

When New York-based cloud payroll provider MyPayrollHR unexpectedly shuttered its doors last month and disappeared with $26 million worth of customer payroll deposits, its payment processor Cachet Financial Services ended up funding the bank accounts of MyPayrollHR client company employees anyway...

Bug Bounty Hunter Ran ISP Doxing Service

A Connecticut man who's earned bug bounty rewards and public recognition from top telecom companies for finding and reporting security holes in their Web sites secretly operated a service that leveraged these same flaws to sell their customers' personal data, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. In May...

Instagram’s New Security Tools are a Welcome Step, But Not Enough

Instagram users should soon have more secure options for protecting their accounts against Internet bad guys. On Tuesday, the Facebook-owned social network said it is in the process of rolling out support for third-party authentication apps. Unfortunately, this welcome new security offering does...

New Bill Seeks Basic IoT Security Standards

Lawmakers in the U.S. Senate today introduced a bill that would set baseline security standards for the government's purchase and use of a broad range of Internet-connected devices, including computers, routers and security cameras. The legislation, which also seeks to remedy some widely-perceive...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, November 2024 Edition

Microsoft today released updates to plug at least 89 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software. November's patch batch includes fixes for two zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited by attackers, as well as two other flaws that were publicly disclosed...

CEO of Data Privacy Company Onerep.com Founded Dozens of People-Search Firms

The data privacy company Onerep.com bills itself as a Virginia-based service for helping people remove their personal information from almost 200 people-search websites. However, an investigation into the history of onerep.com finds this company is operating out of Belarus and Cyprus, and that it...