Porn Clip Disrupts Virtual Court Hearing for Alleged Twitter Hacker

Perhaps fittingly, a Web-streamed court hearing for the 17-year-old alleged mastermind of the July 15 mass hack against Twitter was cut short this morning after mischief makers injected a pornographic video clip into the proceeding. 17-year-old Graham Clark of Tampa, Fla. was among those charged ...

Robocall Legal Advocate Leaks Customer Data

A California company that helps telemarketing firms avoid getting sued for violating a federal law that seeks to curb robocalls has leaked the phone numbers, email addresses and passwords of all its customers, as well as the mobile phone numbers and other data on people who have hired lawyers to ...

Three Charged in July 15 Twitter Compromise

Three individuals have been charged for their alleged roles in the July 15 hack on Twitter, an incident that resulted in Twitter profiles for some of the worlds most recognizable celebrities, executives and public figures sending out tweets advertising a bitcoin scam. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezoss Twitt...

Is Your Chip Card Secure? Much Depends on Where You Bank

Chip-based credit and debit cards are designed to make it infeasible for skimming devices or malware to clone your card when you pay for something by dipping the chip instead of swiping the stripe. But a recent series of malware attacks on U.S.-based merchants suggest thieves are exploiting...

Here’s Why Credit Card Fraud is Still a Thing

Most of the civilized world years ago shifted to requiring computer chips in payment cards that make it far more expensive and difficult for thieves to clone and use them for fraud. One notable exception is the United States, which is still lurching toward this goal. Heres a look at the havoc tha...

Business ID Theft Soars Amid COVID Closures

Identity thieves who specialize in running up unauthorized lines of credit in the names of small businesses are having a field day with all of the closures and economic uncertainty wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. This story is about the victims of a particularly...

Thinking of a Cybersecurity Career? Read This

Thousands of people graduate from colleges and universities each year with cybersecurity or computer science degrees only to find employers are less than thrilled about their hands-on, foundational skills. Heres a look at a recent survey that identified some of the bigger skills gaps, and some...

NY Charges First American Financial for Massive Data Leak

In May 2019, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that the website of mortgage title insurance giant First American Financial Corp. had exposed approximately 885 million records related to mortgage deals going back to 2003. On Wednesday, regulators in New York announced that First American was the targ...

Twitter Hacking for Profit and the LoLs

The New York Times last week ran an interview with several young men who claimed to have had direct contact with those involved in last weeks epic hack against Twitter. These individuals said they were only customers of the person who had access to Twitters internal employee tools, and were not...

Who’s Behind Wednesday’s Epic Twitter Hack?

Twitter was thrown into chaos on Wednesday after accounts for some of the world's most recognizable public figures, executives and celebrities starting tweeting out links to bitcoin scams. Twitter says the attack happened because someone tricked or coerced an employee into providing access to...

‘Wormable’ Flaw Leads July Microsoft Patches

Microsoft today released updates to plug a whopping 123 security holes in Windows and related software, including fixes for a critical, "wormable" flaw in Windows Server versions that Microsoft says is likely to be exploited soon. While this particular weakness mainly affects enterprises, July's...

Breached Data Indexer ‘Data Viper’ Hacked

Data Viper, a security startup that provides access to some 15 billion usernames, passwords and other information exposed in more than 8,000 website breaches, has itself been hacked and its user database posted online. The hackers also claim they are selling on the dark web roughly 2 billion...

E-Verify’s “SSN Lock” is Nothing of the Sort

One of the most-read advice columns on this site is a 2018 piece called "Plant Your Flag, Mark Your Territory," which tried to impress upon readers the importance of creating accounts at websites like those at the Social Security Administration, the IRS and others before crooks do it for you. A k...

Ransomware Gangs Don’t Need PR Help

We've seen an ugly trend recently of tech news stories and cybersecurity firms trumpeting claims of ransomware attacks on companies large and small, apparently based on little more than the say-so of the ransomware gangs themselves. Such coverage is potentially quite harmful and plays deftly into...

COVID-19 ‘Breach Bubble’ Waiting to Pop?

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it harder for banks to trace the source of payment card data stolen from smaller, hacked online merchants. On the plus side, months of quarantine have massively decreased demand for account information that thieves buy and use to create physical counterfeit credit...

Russian Cybercrime Boss Burkov Gets 9 Years

A well-connected Russian hacker once described as “an asset of supreme importance” to Moscow was sentenced on Friday to nine years in a U.S. prison after pleading guilty to running a site that sold stolen payment card data, and to administering a highly secretive crime forum that counted among it...

New Charges, Sentencing in Satori IoT Botnet Conspiracy

The U.S. Justice Department today charged a Canadian and a Northern Ireland man for allegedly conspiring to build botnets that enslaved hundreds of thousands of routers and other Internet of Things IoT devices for use in large-scale distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks. In addition, a...

‘BlueLeaks’ Exposes Files from Hundreds of Police Departments

Hundreds of thousands of potentially sensitive files from police departments across the United States were leaked online last week. The collection, dubbed "BlueLeaks" and made searchable online, stems from a security breach at a Texas web design and hosting company that maintains a number of stat...

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...

FEMA IT Specialist Charged in ID Theft, Tax Refund Fraud Conspiracy

An information technology specialist at the Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA was arrested this week on suspicion of hacking into the human resource databases of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center UPMC in 2014, stealing personal data on more than 65,000 UPMC employees, and selling the...

When Security Takes a Backseat to Productivity

"We must care as much about securing our systems as we care about running them if we are to make the necessary revolutionary change." -CIA's Wikileaks Task Force. So ends a key section of a report the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency produced in the wake of a mammoth data breach in 2016 that led ...

Privnotes.com Is Phishing Bitcoin from Users of Private Messaging Service Privnote.com

For the past year, a site called Privnotes.com has been impersonating Privnote.com, a legitimate, free service that offers private, encrypted messages which self-destruct automatically after they are read. Until recently, I couldn't quite work out what Privnotes was up to, but today it became...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, June 2020 Edition

Microsoft today released software patches to plug at least 129 security holes in its Windows operating systems and supported software, by some accounts a record number of fixes in one go for the software giant. None of the bugs addressed this month are known to have been exploited or detailed pri...

Florence, Ala. Hit By Ransomware 12 Days After Being Alerted by KrebsOnSecurity

In late May, KrebsOnSecurity alerted numerous officials in Florence, Ala. that their information technology systems had been infiltrated by hackers who specialize in deploying ransomware. Nevertheless, on Friday, June 5, the intruders sprang their attack, deploying ransomware and demanding nearly...

Owners of DDoS-for-Hire Service vDOS Get 6 Months Community Service

The co-owners of vDOS, a now-defunct service that for four years helped paying customers launch more than two million distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks that knocked countless Internet users and websites offline, each have been sentenced to six months of community service by an Israeli...

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...

REvil Ransomware Gang Starts Auctioning Victim Data

The criminal group behind the REvil ransomware enterprise has begun auctioning off sensitive data stolen from companies hit by its malicious software. The move marks an escalation in tactics aimed at coercing victims to pay up -- and publicly shaming those who don't. But it may also signal that...

Career Choice Tip: Cybercrime is Mostly Boring

When law enforcement agencies tout their latest cybercriminal arrest, the defendant is often cast as a bravado outlaw engaged in sophisticated, lucrative, even exciting activity. But new research suggests that as cybercrime has become dominated by pay-for-service offerings, the vast majority of...

UK Ad Campaign Seeks to Deter Cybercrime

The United Kingdom's anti-cybercrime agency is running online ads aimed at young people who search the Web for services that enable computer crimes, specifically trojan horse programs and DDoS-for-hire services. The ad campaign follows a similar initiative launched in late 2017 that academics say...

Report: ATM Skimmer Gang Had Protection from Mexican Attorney General’s Office

A group of Romanians operating an ATM company in Mexico and suspected of bribing technicians to install sophisticated Bluetooth-based skimmers in cash machines throughout several top Mexican tourist destinations have enjoyed legal protection from a top anti-corruption official in the Mexican...

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...

Ukraine Nabs Suspect in 773M Password ‘Megabreach’

In January 2019, dozens of media outlets raised the alarm about a new "megabreach" involving the release of some 773 million stolen usernames and passwords that was breathlessly labeled "the largest collection of stolen data in history." A subsequent review by KrebsOnSecurity quickly determined t...

This Service Helps Malware Authors Fix Flaws in their Code

Almost daily now there is news about flaws in commercial software that lead to computers getting hacked and seeded with malware. But the reality is most malicious software also has its share of security holes that open the door for security researchers or ne'er-do-wells to liberate or else seize...

U.S. Secret Service: “Massive Fraud” Against State Unemployment Insurance Programs

A well-organized Nigerian crime ring is exploiting the COVID-19 crisis by committing large-scale fraud against multiple state unemployment insurance programs, with potential losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a new alert issued by the U.S. Secret Service. A memo seen by...

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 ...

Ransomware Hit ATM Giant Diebold Nixdorf

Diebold Nixdorf, a major provider of automatic teller machines ATMs and payment technology to banks and retailers, recently suffered a ransomware attack that disrupted some operations. The company says the hackers never touched its ATMs or customer networks, and that the intrusion only affected i...

Meant to Combat ID Theft, Unemployment Benefits Letter Prompts ID Theft Worries

Millions of Americans now filing for unemployment will receive benefits via a prepaid card issued by U.S. Bank, a Minnesota-based financial institution that handles unemployment payments for more than a dozen U.S. states. Some of these unemployment applications will trigger an automatic letter fr...

Tech Support Scam Uses Child Porn Warning

A new email scam is making the rounds, warning recipients that someone using their Internet address has been caught viewing child pornography. The message claims to have been sent from Microsoft Support, and says the recipient's Windows license will be suspended unless they call an "MS Support"...

Europe’s Largest Private Hospital Operator Fresenius Hit by Ransomware

Fresenius, Europe's largest private hospital operator and a major provider of dialysis products and services that are in such high demand thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, has been hit in a ransomware cyber attack on its technology systems. The company said the incident has limited some of its...

How Cybercriminals are Weathering COVID-19

In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a boon to cybercriminals: With unprecedented numbers of people working from home and anxious for news about the virus outbreak, it's hard to imagine a more target-rich environment for phishers, scammers and malware purveyors. In addition, many crooks a...

Would You Have Fallen for This Phone Scam?

You may have heard that today's phone fraudsters like to use caller ID spoofing services to make their scam calls seem more believable. But you probably didn't know that these fraudsters also can use caller ID spoofing to trick your bank into giving up information about recent transactions on you...

Unproven Coronavirus Therapy Proves Cash Cow for Shadow Pharmacies

Many of the same shadowy organizations that pay people to promote male erectile dysfunction drugs via spam and hacked websites recently have enjoyed a surge in demand for medicines used to fight malaria, lupus and arthritis, thanks largely to unfounded suggestions that these therapies can help...

When in Doubt: Hang Up, Look Up, & Call Back

Many security-conscious people probably think they'd never fall for a phone-based phishing scam. But if your response to such a scam involves anything other than hanging up and calling back the entity that claims to be calling, you may be in for a rude awakening. Here's how one security and...

Who’s Behind the “Reopen” Domain Surge?

The past few weeks have seen a large number of new domain registrations beginning with the word "reopen" and ending with U.S. city or state names. The largest number of them were created just hours after President Trump sent a series of all-caps tweets urging citizens to "liberate" themselves fro...

Sipping from the Coronavirus Domain Firehose

Security experts are poring over thousands of new Coronavirus-themed domain names registered each day, but this often manual effort struggles to keep pace with the flood of domains invoking the virus to promote malware and phishing sites, as well as non-existent healthcare products and charities...

COVID-19 Has United Cybersecurity Experts, But Will That Unity Survive the Pandemic?

The Coronavirus has prompted thousands of information security professionals to volunteer their skills in upstart collaborative efforts aimed at frustrating cybercriminals who are seeking to exploit the crisis for financial gain. Whether it's helping hospitals avoid becoming the next ransomware...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, April 2020 Edition

Microsoft today released updates to fix 113 security vulnerabilities in its various Windows operating systems and related software. Those include at least three flaws that are actively being exploited, as well as two others which were publicly detailed prior to today, potentially giving attackers...

New IRS Site Could Make it Easy for Thieves to Intercept Some Stimulus Payments

The U.S. federal government is now in the process of sending Economic Impact Payments by direct deposit to millions of Americans. Most who are eligible for payments can expect to have funds direct-deposited into the same bank accounts listed on previous years' tax filings sometime next week. Toda...

Microsoft Buys Corp.com So Bad Guys Can’t

In February, KrebsOnSecurity told the story of a private citizen auctioning off the dangerous domain corp.com for the starting price of $1.7 million. Domain experts called corp.com dangerous because years of testing showed whoever wields it would have access to an unending stream of passwords,...

‘War Dialing’ Tool Exposes Zoom’s Password Problems

As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to force people to work from home, countless companies are now holding daily meetings using videoconferencing services from Zoom. But without the protection of a password, there's a decent chance your next Zoom meeting could be "Zoom bombed" -- attended or...