Showing only posts by BrianKrebs. Show all posts.

Why Your VPN May Not Be As Secure As It Claims

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Virtual private networking (VPN) companies market their services as a way to prevent anyone from snooping on your Internet usage. But new research suggests this is a dangerous assumption when connecting to a VPN via an untrusted network, because attackers on the same network could force a target’s …

Man Who Mass-Extorted Psychotherapy Patients Gets Six Years

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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 Psychotherapy Center in …

FCC Fines Major U.S. Wireless Carriers for Selling Customer Location Data

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The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today levied fines totaling nearly $200 million against the four major carriers — including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon — for illegally sharing access to customers’ location information without consent. The fines mark the culmination of a more than four-year investigation into the …

Russian FSB Counterintelligence Chief Gets 9 Years in Cybercrime Bribery Scheme

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The head of counterintelligence for a division of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) was sentenced last week to nine years in a penal colony for accepting a USD $1.7 million bribe to ignore the activities of a prolific Russian cybercrime group that hacked thousands of e-commerce websites …

Who Stole 3.6M Tax Records from South Carolina?

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For nearly a dozen years, residents of South Carolina have been kept in the dark by state and federal investigators over who was responsible for hacking into the state’s revenue department in 2012 and stealing tax and bank account information for 3.6 million people. The answer may …

Crickets from Chirp Systems in Smart Lock Key Leak

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The U.S. government is warning that “smart locks” securing entry to an estimated 50,000 dwellings nationwide contain hard-coded credentials that can be used to remotely open any of the locks. The lock’s maker Chirp Systems remains unresponsive, even though it was first notified about the critical …

Why CISA is Warning CISOs About a Breach at Sisense

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The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said today it is investigating a breach at business intelligence company Sisense, whose products are designed to allow companies to view the status of multiple third-party online services in a single dashboard. CISA urged all Sisense customers to reset any …

Twitter’s Clumsy Pivot to X.com Is a Gift to Phishers

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On April 9, Twitter/X began automatically modifying links that mention “twitter.com” to read “x.com” instead. But over the past 48 hours, dozens of new domain names have been registered that demonstrate how this change could be used to craft convincing phishing links — such as fedetwitter[.]com …

April’s Patch Tuesday Brings Record Number of Fixes

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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 month’s patch …

Fake Lawsuit Threat Exposes Privnote Phishing Sites

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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 look like the real Privnote …

‘The Manipulaters’ Improve Phishing, Still Fail at Opsec

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Roughly nine years ago, KrebsOnSecurity profiled a Pakistan-based cybercrime group called “ The Manipulaters,” a sprawling web hosting network of phishing and spam delivery platforms. In January 2024, The Manipulaters pleaded with this author to unpublish previous stories about their work, claiming the group had turned over a new leaf …

Thread Hijacking: Phishes That Prey on Your Curiosity

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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 recipient’s natural curiosity about being copied on a private discussion, which is modified to …

Recent ‘MFA Bombing’ Attacks Targeting Apple Users

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Several Apple customers recently reported being targeted in elaborate phishing attacks that involve what appears to be a bug in Apple’s password reset feature. In this scenario, a target’s Apple devices are forced to display dozens of system-level prompts that prevent the devices from being used until …

Mozilla Drops Onerep After CEO Admits to Running People-Search Networks

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The nonprofit organization that supports the Firefox web browser said today it is winding down its new partnership with Onerep, an identity protection service recently bundled with Firefox that offers to remove users from hundreds of people-search sites. The move comes just days after a report by KrebsOnSecurity forced …

The Not-so-True People-Search Network from China

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It’s not unusual for the data brokers behind people-search websites to use pseudonyms in their day-to-day lives (you would, too). Some of these personal data purveyors even try to reinvent their online identities in a bid to hide their conflicts of interest. But it’s not every day …

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

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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 its founder has launched …

Patch Tuesday, March 2024 Edition

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Apple and Microsoft recently released software updates to fix dozens of security holes in their operating systems. Microsoft today patched at least 60 vulnerabilities in its Windows OS. Meanwhile, Apple’s new macOS Sonoma addresses at least 68 security weaknesses, and its latest update for iOS fixes two zero-day …

Incognito Darknet Market Mass-Extorts Buyers, Sellers

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Borrowing from the playbook of ransomware purveyors, the darknet narcotics bazaar Incognito Market has begun extorting all of its vendors and buyers, threatening to publish cryptocurrency transaction and chat records of users who refuse to pay a fee ranging from $100 to $20,000. The bold mass extortion attempt …

A Close Up Look at the Consumer Data Broker Radaris

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If you live in the United States, the data broker Radaris likely knows a great deal about you, and they are happy to sell what they know to anyone. But how much do we know about Radaris? Publicly available data indicates that in addition to running a dizzying array …

BlackCat Ransomware Group Implodes After Apparent $22M Payment by Change Healthcare

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There are indications that U.S. healthcare giant Change Healthcare has made a $22 million extortion payment to the infamous BlackCat ransomware group (a.k.a. “ ALPHV “) as the company struggles to bring services back online amid a cyberattack that has disrupted prescription drug services nationwide for weeks. However …

Fulton County, Security Experts Call LockBit’s Bluff

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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 County’s listing from its victim shaming website this morning, claiming the county had paid. But county …

Calendar Meeting Links Used to Spread Mac Malware

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Malicious hackers are targeting people in the cryptocurrency space in attacks that start with a link added to the target’s calendar at Calendly, a popular application for scheduling appointments and meetings. The attackers impersonate established cryptocurrency investors and ask to schedule a video conference call. But clicking the …

FBI’s LockBit Takedown Postponed a Ticking Time Bomb in Fulton County, Ga.

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The FBI’s takedown of the LockBit ransomware group last week came as LockBit was preparing to release sensitive data stolen from government computer systems in Fulton County, Ga. But LockBit is now regrouping, and the gang says it will publish the stolen Fulton County data on March 2 …

New Leak Shows Business Side of China’s APT Menace

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A new data leak that appears to have come from one of China’s top private cybersecurity firms provides a rare glimpse into the commercial side of China’s many state-sponsored hacking groups. Experts say the leak illustrates how Chinese government agencies increasingly are contracting out foreign espionage campaigns …

Feds Seize LockBit Ransomware Websites, Offer Decryption Tools, Troll Affiliates

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U.S. and U.K. authorities have seized the darknet websites run by LockBit, a prolific and destructive ransomware group that has claimed more than 2,000 victims worldwide and extorted over $120 million in payments. Instead of listing data stolen from ransomware victims who didn’t pay, LockBit …

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