Author Archives: BrianKrebs

Banks: Credit Card Breach at CiCi’s Pizza

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CiCi’s Pizza, an American fast food business based in Coppell, Texas with more than 500 stores in 35 states, appears to be the latest restaurant chain to struggle with a credit card breach. It appears that hackers obtained access to card data at affected restaurants by posing as technical support specialists for the company’s point-of-sale provider, and that multiple retailers have been targeted by this cybercrime gang. Continue reading Banks: Credit Card Breach at CiCi’s Pizza→

Dropbox Smeared in Week of Megabreaches

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Last week, LifeLock and several other identity theft protection firms erroneously alerted their customers to a breach at cloud storage giant Dropbox.com — an incident that reportedly exposed some 73 million usernames and passwords. The only problem with that notification was that Dropbox didn’t have a breach; the data appears instead to have come from another breach revealed this week at social network Tumblr. Continue reading Dropbox Smeared in Week of Megabreaches→

Mir Islam – the Guy the Govt Says Swatted My Home – to be Sentenced June 22

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On March 14, 2013 our humble home in Annandale, Va. was “swatted” — that is to say, surrounded by a heavily-armed police force that was responding to fraudulent reports of a hostage situation at our residence. Later this month the government will sentence 21-year-old hacker named Mir Islam for that stunt and for leading a criminal conspiracy allegedly engaged in a pattern of swatting, identity theft and wire fraud. Continue reading Mir Islam – the Guy the Govt Says Swatted My Home – to be Sentenced June 22→

Got $90,000? A Windows 0-Day Could Be Yours

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How much would a cybercriminal, nation state or organized crime group pay for blueprints on how to exploit a serious, currently undocumented, unpatched vulnerability in all versions of Microsoft Windows? That price probably depends on the power of the exploit and what the market will bear at the time, but here’s a look at one convincing recent exploit sales thread from the cybercrime underworld where the current asking price for a Windows-wide bug that allegedly defeats all of Microsoft’s current security defenses is USD $90,000. Continue reading Got $90,000? A Windows 0-Day Could Be Yours→

Did the Clinton Email Server Have an Internet-Based Printer?

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The Associated Press today points to a remarkable footnote in a recent State Department inspector general report on the Hillary Clinton email scandal: The mail was managed from the vanity domain “clintonemail.com.” But here’s a potentially more explosive finding: A review of the historic domain registration records for that domain indicates that whoever built the private email […] Continue reading Did the Clinton Email Server Have an Internet-Based Printer?→

Skimmers Found at Walmart: A Closer Look

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Recent local news stories about credit card skimmers found in self-checkout lanes at some Walmart locations reminds me of a criminal sales pitch I saw recently for overlay skimmers made specifically for the very same card terminals. Continue reading Skimmers Found at Walmart: A Closer Look→

As Scope of 2012 Breach Expands, LinkedIn to Again Reset Passwords for Some Users

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A 2012 data breach that was thought to have exposed 6.5 million hashed passwords for LinkedIn users instead likely impacted more than 117 million accounts, the company now says. In response, the business networking giant said today that it would once again force a password reset for individual users thought to be impacted in the expanded breach. Continue reading As Scope of 2012 Breach Expands, LinkedIn to Again Reset Passwords for Some Users→

Microsoft Disables Wi-Fi Sense on Windows 10

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Microsoft has disabled its controversial Wi-Fi Sense feature, a component embedded in Windows 10 devices that shares access to WiFi networks to which you connect with any contacts you may have listed in Outlook and Skype — and, with an opt-in — your Facebook friends. Continue reading Microsoft Disables Wi-Fi Sense on Windows 10→

Carding Sites Turn to the ‘Dark Cloud’

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Crooks who peddle stolen credit cards on the Internet face a constant challenge: Keeping their shops online and reachable in the face of meddling from law enforcement officials, security firms, researchers and vigilantes. In this post, we’ll examine a large collection of hacked computers around the world that currently serves as a criminal cloud hosting environment for a variety of cybercrime operations, from sending spam to hosting malicious software and stolen credit card shops. Continue reading Carding Sites Turn to the ‘Dark Cloud’→