Collaborate Disseminate
As part of the whole-of-government effort to counter ransomware, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced a set of actions focused on disrupting criminal networks and virtual currency exchanges responsible for laundering ransoms, encouraging impro… Continue reading U.S. Department of the Treasury announces set of actions to counter ransomware
Scammers are impersonating the head of Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, in an attempt to spook victims into handing over their financial information. The Belgian police have received hundreds of reports of emails purporting to come from Catherine De Bolle, Europol’s executive director, according to the Brussels Times. The email accuses the recipient of child pornography and sex trafficking, and then attempts to steal the PayPal account credentials. The email threatens to initiate criminal prosecution against the recipient unless they reply within 72 hours. Europol, which had warned about this type of scam in April, again urged internet users on Thursday not to fall for the gimmick. “Our executive director would never contact members of the public threatening individuals with opening a criminal investigation,” tweeted Europol, which does investigate lots of actual cybercrime. Cybercrooks often impersonate the law enforcement agencies that hunt them in an effort to intimidate […]
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Continue reading Scammers impersonate Europol chief in an effort to defraud Belgians
It might be time to update the obituary of one of the web’s most notorious marketplaces for hacking tools and drugs. Four years after the FBI shut down AlphaBay, which registered a reported $1 billion in transactions, a scammer is touting the launch of a new version of the illicit marketplace, according to threat intelligence firm Flashpoint. In an online posting earlier this week, someone claiming to be one of the original moderators of AlphaBay said the marketplace was coming back into business, Flashpoint researchers noted. Among the offerings on the revamped AlphaBay, according to the posting, will be the source code of a hacking tool that steals banking credentials, and money, from victims. U.S. and European law enforcement agencies have in the last year conducted a series of crackdowns on popular dark-web forums. But the alleged resurrection of AlphaBay, dubbed the Amazon.com of the dark web, shows how difficult it can […]
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Ransomware isn’t new; the idea dates back to 1986 with the “Brain” computer virus. Now, it’s become the criminal business model of the internet for two reasons. The first is the realization that no one values data more than its original owner, and it m… Continue reading Disrupting Ransomware by Disrupting Bitcoin
The global economy increasingly depends on data flowing freely across borders, yet the number of nations with regulatory barriers preventing that from happening has nearly doubled in four years—from 35 countries in 2017 to 62 now, according to a new re… Continue reading Data-localization policies are spreading rapidly around the world
Spain’s Ministry of the Interior has announced the arrest of 16 individuals connected to the Grandoreiro and Melcoz cybercrime groups. Both are originally from Brazil and form part of the Tetrade umbrella, operating for a few years now in Latin America and Western Europe. Continue reading Arrests of members of Tetrade seed groups Grandoreiro and Melcoz
Motherboard got its hands on one of those Anom phones that were really FBI honeypots.
The details are interesting.
Continue reading Analysis of the FBI’s Anom Phone
In this second installment of the series (listen to Albert Gonzales Part 1 here), Gonzales is working with the Secret Service and apparently doing an outstanding job. He was such a good employee, in fact, that they had him doing seminars for staff… Continue reading Malicious Life Podcast: The Life and Exploits of Albert Gonzales Part 2
On June 11, McDonald’s said in a message to its U.S. employees that it had discovered unauthorized activity on an internal security system. The burger chain responded by bringing on some external consultants to investigate what had happened, repor… Continue reading Biden-Putin Summit and Why Threat Actors Just Won’t Give it a Rest
After the multimillion-dollar extortions of Colonial Pipeline and meat processor JBS, a Secret Service official is urging organizations not to pay off hackers and underscoring that more victims need to come forward in order to help U.S. officials get a handle on the problem. “We’re in this boat we’re in now because over the last several years, people have paid the ransom,” Stephen Nix, assistant to the Special Agent in Charge at the U.S. Secret Service, said at CyberTalks, a summit presented by CyberScoop. “This is the monetization of security flaws. That’s what we’re looking at. That horse has left the barn.” Nix asked ransomware victims to tell law enforcement agencies details such as the cryptocurrency wallet, or account, used by the attackers in order to track them down. “I think it’s a very small number of cases we actually hear about,” he added. “If we don’t hear about it, […]
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