Author Archives: Jeff Stone

Two accused email scammers brought to US to face fraud-related charges

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Two accused scammers have arrived in the U.S. from Ghana to face charges that they were involved in separate conspiracies to defraud American victims out of millions of dollars. Deborah Mensah, a 33-year-old Ghanian national, stands accused of stealing more than $10 million through business email compromise (BEC) fraud, in which she allegedly targeted businesses and elderly individuals as part of an international scam. Mensah is the eight person to be charged as part of the investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday. The department also announced that another accused BEC scammer, Maxwell Peter, had been extradited to the U.S. to face charges in an unrelated case. “Deborah Mensah is alleged to have been a participant in a conspiracy that resulted in the theft of millions of dollars from businesses and vulnerable individuals across the United States, and the laundering of that money through a network of bank accounts in […]

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FBI stopped a ransomware scheme by tricking a suspect to meet in Los Angeles

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U.S. police arrested a Russian man accused of offering an American associate $1 million to infect their employer with malicious software, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday. Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, a 27-year-old Russian citizen, was arrested Aug. 22 on a single count of conspiring to intentionally cause harm to a protected computer. According to an FBI complaint, Kriuchkov traveled to northern Nevada to offer $1 million to an acquaintance to help hack the computer system at an unnamed U.S. company. The plan was to install malware on the machines, then demand a ransom in exchange for unlocking the systems. The scheme went sideways, it seems, when FBI agents contacted Kriuchkov, then urged him to drive to Los Angeles, Calif., where he was taken into custody. The Justice Department announcement does not identify Kriuchkov’s alleged conspirators, the name of the intended victim company or strain of malware they allegedly planned to […]

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Police investigators blame Algerian for coronavirus-themed phishing attacks

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An Algerian web developer who claims to have “a demonstrated history of working in the internet industry” has launched coronavirus-themed email scams and helped build other hacking tools, according to a police intelligence report. Samir Djelal, who allegedly used the internet alias Cazanova Haxor, developed malicious software that was used in a phishing attack aimed at California city accounts in March 2020, states an internal report from the California Cyber Security Integration Center, a state organization meant to facilitate information sharing about digital threats. The threat profile, dated April 6, 2020, was made public as part of BlueLeaks, the 269 GB database containing data on police bulletins, training materials and other law resources taken from law enforcement fusion centers. Distributed Denial of Secrets, a WikiLeaks-style transparency group, appears to have obtained the trove of information after hackers breached Netsential, a Texas internet company that handles websites for police agencies throughout […]

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Former Uber CSO criminally charged with covering up 2016 data breach

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U.S. prosecutors have charged the former Chief Security Officer at Uber with allegedly covering up a data breach at the ride-hailing company that exposed information tied to roughly 57 million people. Joe Sullivan was charged Thursday in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco with failing to disclose details of the security incident to the proper authorities. Sullivan, who now works as the chief information security officer at Cloudflare, allegedly committed two felonies by not informing investigators about the hack while they probed the circumstances surrounding a prior data breach. Sullivan was charged with obstruction of justice and misprision of a felony. The maximum sentence if convicted on both charges is eight years in prison. The complaint pertains to a 2016 incident in which two hackers contacted Uber via email to report that they had accessed personal information about 57 million Uber users and drivers, including driver’s license numbers. The […]

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UK suit seeks compensation for Marriott data breach victims

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Marriott International is the subject of a lawsuit in the United Kingdom brought by millions of former guests seeking compensation for the exposure of their data in a massive breach. The class action-style lawsuit, filed by U.K. resident Martin Bryant, comes in response to a security incident in which hackers accessed information about more than 300 million people between July 2014 and September 2018. The breach, first revealed in 2018, included data such as email addresses, phone numbers and credit card data about people who booked reservations through the Starwood Hotels chain, which Marriott acquired. U.S. officials privately attributed the breach to hackers working on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security, the New York Times reported. Passport numbers belonging to some 25 million people were also involved. In a statement, Bryant said he filed the lawsuit because the hotel operators had failed to “take adequate steps to ensure the […]

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Facebook removes hundreds of QAnon groups, aiming to curb conspiracy’s spread

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Facebook has removed more than 790 groups, 100 pages and 1,500 advertisements affiliated with QAnon, the social media movement that spreads an unfounded conspiracy theory accusing President Donald Trump’s critics of child sex trafficking. The company said Wednesday it also would limit the reach of more than 10,000 Instagram pages and 2,000 Facebook groups in connection with a conspiracy theory that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has described as a domestic terror threat. Facebook also said it would take action against militia organizations and users who encouraged violence at domestic protests. The announcement added that Facebook has removed 980 groups, 520 pages and 160 advertisements connected to adherents of Antifa, the anti-facist political movement. Facebook’s QAnon removal comes after groups increased by 671% since March, in some cases including more than 1 million members, according to research from the Global Network on Extremism and Technology. The influx coincided with shelter-in-place […]

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Apple’s Attest API tool aims to tighten app security

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Apple released a new tool for developers that aims to better protect the user data that flows through iOS apps. The company’s App Attest API, a new software tool meant to “protect against security threats to your app on iOS 14 or later, reducing fraudulent use of your services,” according to an Aug. 3 bulletin to developers. App Attest API generates a cryptographic key on a user’s device that aims to authenticate that an app is what it appears, and ensure that a phone isn’t transmitting user data to a fraudulent app designed to steal their usernames and passwords or other information. Security researchers specializing in iPhones have long said that it’s difficult to determine whether hackers have successfully breached an individual device, in part because of the way Apple limits visibility onto its machines. If an app is trying to exceed its authorized permissions, it’s a challenge for forensic […]

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Facebook hopes voting hub will curb mail-in voting misinformation

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Facebook and Instagram are launching a new portal aimed at delivering accurate voting information ahead of the U.S. elections, an effort that coincides with ongoing misinformation surrounding the political process. The company announced Thursday it will launch a voter information hub that will include information about registration deadlines, ballot request information and the correct protocol for submitting a ballot. The hub will exist as a standalone web page, though Facebook and Instagram also will include notifications in users’ feeds about upcoming deadlines. The company also will include links on posts about in-person and mail-in voting, directing users to a page where they can find accurate information provided by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank, about the voting process. Facebook started adding such labels on posts by federal politicians, including President Donald Trump, and candidates for political office in July. The expanded effort comes amid an ongoing effort by […]

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Chinese accounts blast Trump, with help from AI-generated pictures

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Chinese social media accounts are not happy with President Donald Trump. A network of accounts on multiple platforms has been criticizing Trump and broadcasting more positive images of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, as part of an apparent campaign to rebuke the White House, according to a report published Wednesday by Graphika, a New York-based research firm. The network, which Graphika describes as “Spamouflage Dragon,” produces short videos on a near-daily basis on topics ranging from the Trump administration’s decision to prohibit the social media company TikTok in the U.S. to the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Whether the network was connected to the Chinese government remains unclear, Graphika said. Details of the campaign emerge after a U.S. intelligence assessment determined that Beijing was working to reduce the president’s reelection chances. “The network was active and public, but ultimately low-engagement,” the report stated. “It typically worked by using apparently […]

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An advanced group specializing in corporate espionage is on a hacking spree

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A Russian-speaking hacking group specializing in corporate espionage has targeted 26 commercial organizations since 2018 in attempts to steal vast amounts of data from the private sector, according to new findings. At least 14 of the 26 companies that the group targeted in fact were breached, according to research published Thursday by the security firm Group-IB, which has offices in Moscow in Singapore. The hacking group, dubbed RedCurl, stole confidential corporate documents including contracts, financial documents, employee records and legal records. Victims spanned a range of industries — including construction, finance, retail and law — with headquarters in Russia, Ukraine, the U.K., Canada, Germany and Norway. RedCurl relies on hacking techniques similar to groups known as RedOctober and CloudAtlas, another Russian-speaking group that’s targeted multiple entities and government networks “primarily in Russia,” according to the MITRE Corp.’s database of hacking groups. The Russian security vendor Kaspersky previously published its own […]

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