Showing only posts by BrianKrebs. Show all posts.

Apple AirTag Bug Enables ‘Good Samaritan’ Attack

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The new $30 AirTag tracking device from Apple has a feature that allows anyone who finds one of these tiny location beacons to scan it with a mobile phone and discover its owner’s phone number if the AirTag has been set to lost mode. But according to new …

Indictment, Lawsuits Revive Trump-Alfa Bank Story

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In October 2016, media outlets reported that data collected by some of the world’s most renowned cybersecurity experts had identified frequent and unexplained communications between an email server used by the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s largest financial institutions. Those publications set off speculation …

Does Your Organization Have a Security.txt File?

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It happens all the time: Organizations get hacked because there isn’t an obvious way for security researchers to let them know about security vulnerabilities or data leaks. Or maybe it isn’t entirely clear who should get the report when remote access to an organization’s internal network …

Trial Ends in Guilty Verdict for DDoS-for-Hire Boss

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A jury in California today reached a guilty verdict in the trial of Matthew Gatrel, a St. Charles, Ill. man charged in 2018 with operating two online services that allowed paying customers to launch powerful distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Internet users and websites. Gatrel’s conviction comes roughly …

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, September 2021 Edition

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Microsoft today pushed software updates to plug dozens of security holes in Windows and related products, including a vulnerability that is already being exploited in active attacks. Also, Apple has issued an emergency update to fix a flaw that’s reportedly been abused to install spyware on iOS products …

KrebsOnSecurity Hit By Huge New IoT Botnet “Meris”

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On Thursday evening, KrebsOnSecurity was the subject of a rather massive (and mercifully brief) distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The assault came from “ Meris,” the same new botnet behind record-shattering attacks against Russian search giant Yandex this week and internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare earlier this summer. Cloudflare recently wrote about …

Microsoft: Attackers Exploiting Windows Zero-Day Flaw

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Microsoft Corp. warns that attackers are exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability in Windows 10 and many Windows Server versions to seize control over PCs when users open a malicious document or visit a booby-trapped website. There is currently no official patch for the flaw, but Microsoft has released recommendations …

“FudCo” Spam Empire Tied to Pakistani Software Firm

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In May 2015, KrebsOnSecurity briefly profiled “ The Manipulaters,” the name chosen by a prolific cybercrime group based in Pakistan that was very publicly selling spam tools and a range of services for crafting, hosting and deploying malicious email. Six years later, a review of the social media postings from …

Gift Card Gang Extracts Cash From 100k Inboxes Daily

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Some of the most successful and lucrative online scams employ a “low-and-slow” approach — avoiding detection or interference from researchers and law enforcement agencies by stealing small bits of cash from many people over an extended period. Here’s the story of a cybercrime group that compromises up to 100 …

15-Year-Old Malware Proxy Network VIP72 Goes Dark

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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, VIP72’s online storefront — which ironically enough has remained at the same U …

Man Robbed of 16 Bitcoin Sues Young Thieves’ Parents

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In 2018, Andrew Schober was digitally mugged for approximately $1 million worth of bitcoin. After several years of working with investigators, Schober says he’s confident he has located two young men in the United Kingdom responsible for developing a clever piece of digital clipboard-stealing malware that let them …

Wanted: Disgruntled Employees to Deploy Ransomware

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Criminal hackers will try almost anything to get inside a profitable enterprise and secure a million-dollar payday from a ransomware infection. Apparently now that includes emailing employees directly and asking them to unleash the malware inside their employer’s network in exchange for a percentage of any ransom amount …

T-Mobile Investigating Claims of Massive Data Breach

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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 details that uniquely identify …

New Anti Anti-Money Laundering Services for Crooks

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A new dark web service is marketing to cybercriminals who are curious to see how their various cryptocurrency holdings and transactions may be linked to known criminal activity. Dubbed “ Antinalysis,” the service purports to offer a glimpse into how one’s payment activity might be flagged by law enforcement …

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, August 2021 Edition

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Microsoft today released software updates to plug at least 44 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and related products. The software giant warned that attackers already are pouncing on one of the flaws, which ironically enough involves an easy-to-exploit bug in the software component responsible for patching Windows …

Phishing Sites Targeting Scammers and Thieves

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I was preparing to knock off work for the week on a recent Friday evening when a curious and annoying email came in via the contact form on this site: “Hello I go by the username Nuclear27 on your site Briansclub[.]com,” wrote “ Mitch,” confusing me with the proprietor …

Ransomware Gangs and the Name Game Distraction

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It’s 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 don’t go away so much as reinvent themselves under a new name …

The Life Cycle of a Breached Database

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Every time there is another data breach, we are asked to change our password at the breached entity. But the reality is that in most cases by the time the victim organization discloses an incident publicly the information has already been harvested many times over by profit-seeking cybercriminals. Here …

PlugwalkJoe Does the Perp Walk

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Joseph “PlugwalkJoe” O’Connor, 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 summer’s mass-hack of Twitter, KrebsOnSecurity wrote that 22-year-old British citizen Joseph “PlugwalkJoe” O’Connor appeared to have been involved …

Serial Swatter Who Caused Death Gets Five Years in Prison

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A 18-year-old Tennessee man who helped set in motion a fraudulent distress call to police that led to the death of a 60-year-old grandfather in 2020 was sentenced to 60 months in prison today. 60-year-old Mark Herring died of a heart attack after police surrounded his home in response …

Spam Kingpin Peter Levashov Gets Time Served

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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 Microsoft computers …

Don’t Wanna Pay Ransom Gangs? Test Your Backups.

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Browse the comments on virtually any story about a ransomware attack and you will almost surely encounter the view that the victim organization could have avoided paying their extortionists if only they’d had proper data backups. But the ugly truth is there are many non-obvious reasons why victims …

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, July 2021 Edition

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Microsoft today released updates to patch at least 116 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related software. At least four of the vulnerabilities addressed today are under active attack, according to Microsoft. Thirteen of the security bugs quashed in this month’s release earned Microsoft’s most-dire …

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