Category Archives: Financial

In Brazil, scammers see the coronavirus as a serious money-making opportunity

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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s critics say he hasn’t taken the impact of the coronavirus seriously. The same can’t be said for Brazil’s cybercriminals. As deaths from the virus have surged past 66,000 in Brazil, scammers have set up new infrastructure to dupe people who are desperate for relief, and have set up bank accounts in their names. At a time when even more people in South America’s biggest country are glued to their phones or computers, Brazil’s already-flourishing cybercriminal economy has been busy. “Scam operations have been highly effective in Brazil, from the first announcement of the government assistance program,” Jefferson Macedo, managing consultant on IBM’s X-Force security team, told CyberScoop. IBM has uncovered nearly 700 malicious websites related to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, in recent months. The crooks are impersonating government apps used to sign up for financial relief and sending people a flurry of text […]

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Feds indict ‘fxmsp’ in connection with million-dollar hacking operation

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The U.S. Department of Justice has charged a man with hacking-related crimes as part of an investigation into a group of foreign scammers accused of targeting more than 300 organizations throughout the world. Prosecutors in the Western District of Washington charged Andrey Turchin, who resides in Kazakhstan, with five felony counts in connection with a year-long fraud effort. Last known to be in Kazakhstan, Turchin allegedly sold remote access hacking tools on cybercriminal forums, typically charging tens of thousands of dollars for access to data that would cost victims tens of millions of dollars. Turchin went by a series of aliases, including “fxmsp,” according to the Justice Department. He was initially charged in December 2018, though the indictment was kept under seal until Tuesday, one month after security vendor Group-IB released its own research documenting the work of a hacker known by the “fxmsp” alias. “U.S. authorities have reason to […]

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New round of bugs found in Citrix software, but this time a patch is ready

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Six months ago, a critical vulnerability found in software made by Citrix set off an uncomfortable few weeks for the virtual private networking vendor and the Fortune 500 companies that rely on its products. It took Citrix a month to release a software fix, well after researchers were warning that malicious hackers were actively exploiting the vulnerability. Even with a fix available, Chinese spies conducted a sweeping operation that took advantage of the software flaw in critical infrastructure sectors. On Tuesday, Citrix revealed 11 new vulnerabilities in those same cloud-based and remote access products. This time, the Florida-based VPN service provider is hoping to head off attacks by having patches available immediately. The vulnerabilities, under certain conditions, could allow an attacker to inject malicious code into a network running Citrix software, or conduct a denial-of service attack on virtual servers. Citrix urged customers to install the fixes. There haven’t been […]

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Magecart-related group hits 570 websites, taking 184,000 card numbers

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Hackers who targeted 570 e-commerce sites to steal customer financial information compromised more than 180,000 payment cards as part of a covert fraud effort, according to new research analysis. The group, known as “Keeper,” inserted malicious computer code onto the sites, typically by exploiting weaknesses in technology provided by the sites’ third-party software suppliers. The attack technique, broadly known as Magecart, has struck many thousands of merchants in recent years, ranging from British Airways and NurtiBullet to smaller stores. Gemini Advisory, a threat intelligence startup that scans criminal forums for stolen payment card data, announced the latest campaign in a report published Tuesday. Since April 2017, the Keeper group has aimed to infect 570 websites based in 55 countries, most often in the U.S., U.K. and the Netherlands. Researchers found an unsecured access log belonging to the Keeper group containing 184,000 compromised payment cards from between July 2018 until April […]

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Researchers tie email fraud campaign aimed at Fortune 500 firms to Russian scammers

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An emerging group of scammers masquerading as legitimate business executives is behind more than 200 email-based attacks that aim to swindle hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies, according to new findings. Dubbed “Cosmic Lynx” in research published Tuesday by the email security firm Agari, the group has targeted individuals in 46 countries since July 2019, often victimizing senior leaders in Fortune 500 or Global 2000 firms. It’s the latest in a long line of business email compromise (BEC) gangs, which impersonate trusted associates to request wire transfers or other payments. Unlike alleged operators often identified in U.S. indictments, the Cosmic Lynx group is likely made up of attackers based in Russia, researchers said, in what Agari described as the first-ever Russian crime ring of this kind. More often, prosecutions of accused BEC scammers are against suspects with roots in Nigeria. American victims reported $1.7 billion in BEC-related losses to the FBI last […]

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Operators of Android hacking kit impersonate postal services in US and Europe

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Two years ago, when researchers at antivirus company Trend Micro reported on a new mobile data-stealing kit known as FakeSpy, they warned there could be more to come from the hackers. Directing the Android-focused malware at users outside of South Korea and Japan, where it was discovered, would simply be a matter of reconfiguring the code, the researchers said. That’s exactly what happened. On Wednesday, another set of researchers, from security company Cybereason, revealed how FakeSpy’s operators have been impersonating various postal services in attacks on users in the U.S., China and Europe in the last several weeks. The hackers have taken aim at thousands of users with the help of phony text messages that, if clicked, install code capable of siphoning off financial data from mobile applications. The findings show how, with an effective mobile malware kit written, hackers can tweak the code to target different parts of the world and see […]

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New Zealand freezes $90 million connected to accused bitcoin launderer Alexander Vinnik

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Authorities in New Zealand have seized the equivalent of $90 million in assets as part of an investigation into a Russian man accused of laundering cybercriminal funds through a global cryptocurrency exchange. The New Zealand Police announced Monday it had taken control of the funds, equivalent to $140 million in New Zealand dollars, belonging to Alexander Vinnik, the alleged operator of BTC-e, a currency trading platform shuttered by the U.S. government in 2017. The exchange effectively functioned as a money laundering operation for internet scammers engaged in computer hacking, ransomware attacks, fraud and illicit drug sales, according to New Zealand Police Commissioner Andrew Coster. “New Zealand Police has worked closely with the Internal Revenue Service of the United States to address this very serious offending,” Coster said in a statement. “These funds are likely to reflect the profit gained from the victimization of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of […]

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Treasury Department sanctions six Nigerians after email scam nabs millions of dollars

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U.S. officials have sanctioned six Nigerian men for their involvement in email fraud schemes resulting in the theft of more than $6 million from American businesses and individuals. The Department of Treasury announced on Tuesday it had taken action against the accused scammers as part of an effort to stifle business email compromise efforts, in which attackers pose as co-workers, family members or romantic partners. In this case, suspects impersonated executives and potential love interests to obtain victims’ bank account information, usernames and passwords, Treasury officials said. More than 19,000 Americans reported being victimized by such crimes in 2019, leading to $1.5 billion in known theft, according to the most recent figures from the FBI. Reported losses have increased every year since the bureau started tracking BEC figures in 2013, officials said. “Cybercriminals prey on vulnerable Americans and small businesses to deceive and defraud them,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said […]

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Here’s what that Capital One court decision means for corporate cybersecurity

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When a judge ruled last month that Capital One must provide outsiders with a third-party incident response report detailing the circumstances around the bank’s massive data breach, the cybersecurity world took notice. The surprise decision, in effect, determined that Capital One would need to provide the forensic details — warts and all — about the hack to attorneys representing a group of customers suing the bank. It’s the kind of report that, if made public, could highlight technical and procedural failures that made it possible for a single suspect to allegedly collect gigabytes of data about 100 million people from a bank with $28 billion in revenue. Typically, hacked organizations are able to keep incident response reports private and avoid costly suits by shielding the details under attorney-client privilege. Not under this decision. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Anderson of the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that Capital One must provide a […]

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Hackers use fake contact tracing apps in attempt to install banking malware on Android phones

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Twelve applications posing as coronavirus contact tracing apps available outside mainstream marketplaces are designed to steal personal and financial information from unwitting Android users. Apps meant to impersonate official government tracing apps from countries including Italy, Russia and Singapore trigger malicious software capable of collecting a range of data from user’s devices, the threat intelligence firm Anomali found in research shared with CyberScoop prior to its publication. It’s the latest example of hackers and scammers exploiting global events to try stealing from anxious smartphone users who, in this case, would have believed they were downloading an app designed to measure the prevalence of COVID-19 in their community. None of the apps were included in the Google Play Store at press time. Anomali determined that apps were available on suspicious websites and in third-party app markets. Researchers were unable to determine how many people downloaded the suspicious apps, and the distinct […]

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