The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the CEO of a still unnamed company has been indicted for creating a fake auditing company to falsify security certifications in order to win government business. [...]
After retiring in 2014 from an uncharacteristically long tenure running the NSA (and US CyberCommand), Keith Alexander founded a cybersecurity company called IronNet. At the time, he claimed that it was based on IP he developed on his own time while still in the military. That always troubled me …
It’s possible to cancel other people’s voter registration: On Friday, four days after Georgia Democrats began warning that bad actors could abuse the state’s new online portal for canceling voter registrations, the Secretary of State’s Office acknowledged to ProPublica that it had identified multiple such …
Some scholars are inflating their reference counts by sneaking them into metadata: Citations of scientific work abide by a standardized referencing system: Each reference explicitly mentions at least the title, authors’ names, publication year, journal or conference name, and page numbers of the cited publication. These details are stored …
First-person account of someone who fell for a scam, that started as a fake Amazon service rep and ended with a fake CIA agent, and lost $50,000 cash. And this is not a naive or stupid person. The details are fascinating. And if you think it couldn’t …
A deepfake video conference call—with everyone else on the call a fake— fooled a finance worker into sending $25M to the criminals’ account. [...]
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Panuwat Sikham ) After years of inaction, the FCC this week said that it's finally going to protect consumers against a scam that takes control of their cell phone numbers by deceiving employees who work for mobile carriers. While commissioners congratulated themselves for the move, there …
Selling miniature replicas to unsuspecting shoppers: Online marketplaces sell tiny pink cowboy hats. They also sell miniature pencil sharpeners, palm-size kitchen utensils, scaled-down books and camping chairs so small they evoke the Stonehenge scene in “This Is Spinal Tap.” Many of the minuscule objects aren’t clearly advertised. [...] But …
Interesting story : Napoleon Gonzalez, of Etna, assumed the identity of his brother in 1965, a quarter century after his sibling’s death as an infant, and used the stolen identity to obtain Social Security benefits under both identities, multiple passports and state identification cards, law enforcement officials said. [...] A …
A reporter used an AI synthesis of his own voice to fool the voice authentication system for Lloyd’s Bank. [...]
“Pig butchering” is the colorful name given to online cons that trick the victim into giving money to the scammer, thinking it is an investment opportunity. It’s a rapidly growing area of fraud, and getting more sophisticated. [...]
This is a story of one piece of what is probably a complex employment scam. Basically, real programmers are having their resumes copied and co-opted by scammers, who apply for jobs (or, I suppose, get recruited from various job sites), then hire other people with Western looks and language …
Someone in the UK is stealing smartphones and credit cards from people who have stored them in gym lockers, and is using the two items in combination to commit fraud: Phones, of course, can be made inaccessible with the use of passwords and face or fingerprint unlocking. And bank …
Enlarge / Ally debit card owners are reporting fraudulent charges at a steady cadence over the past week. (credit: Getty Images) Ben Langhofer, a financial planner and single father of three in Wichita, Kansas, decided to start a side business. He had made a handbook for his family, laying out …
Scammers were able to convince YouTube that other peoples’ music was their own. They successfully stole $23 million before they were caught. No one knows how common this scam is, and how much money total is being stolen in this way. Presumably this is not an uncommon fraud. While …
Zelle is rife with fraud : Zelle’s immediacy has also made it a favorite of fraudsters. Other types of bank transfers or transactions involving payment cards typically take at least a day to clear. But once crooks scare or trick victims into handing over money via Zelle, they can …
The story is an old one, but the tech gives it a bunch of new twists : Gemma Brett, a 27-year-old designer from west London, had only been working at Madbird for two weeks when she spotted something strange. Curious about what her commute would be like when the pandemic …
Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen a bunch of writing about what seems to be fake COVID-19 testing sites. They take your name and info, and do a nose swab, but you never get test results. Speculation centered around data harvesting, but that didn’t make sense …
The City of Austin is warning about QR codes stuck to parking meters that take people to fraudulent payment sites. [...]
The FBI has issued a bulletin describing a bitcoin variant of a wire fraud scam : As the agency describes it, the scammer will contact their victim and somehow convince them that they need to send money, either with promises of love, further riches, or by impersonating an actual institution …
The Squid Game cryptocurrency was a complete scam : The SQUID cryptocurrency peaked at a price of $2,861 before plummeting to $0 around 5:40 a.m. ET., according to the website CoinMarketCap. This kind of theft, commonly called a “rug pull” by crypto investors, happens when the creators …
It turns out that it’s surprisingly easy to create a fake Harvard student and get a harvard.edu email account. Scammers are using that prestigious domain name to shill brands : Basically, it appears that anyone with $300 to spare can – or could, depending on whether Harvard successfully shuts …
Here’s a story of someone who, with three compatriots, rented textbooks from Amazon and then sold them instead of returning them. They used gift cards and prepaid credit cards to buy the books, so there was no available balance when Amazon tried to charge them the buyout price …
In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court just narrowed the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act : In a ruling delivered today, the court sided with Van Buren and overturned his 18-month conviction. In a 37-page opinion written and delivered by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court explained …