Fraud on Zelle

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 siphon away thousands of dollars in seconds. There’s no way for customers — and in many cases, the banks themselves — to retrieve the money.

[…]

It’s not clear who is legally liable for such losses. Banks say that returning money to defrauded customers is not their responsibility, since the federal law covering electronic transfers — known in the industry as Regulation E ­– requires them to cover only “unauthorized” transactions, and the fairly common scam that Mr. Faunce fell prey to tricks people into making the transfers themselves. Victims say because they were duped into sending the money, the transaction is unauthorized. Regulatory guidance has so far been murky…

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Stealing Bicycles by Swapping QR Codes

This is a clever hack against those bike-rental kiosks:

They’re stealing Citi Bikes by switching the QR scan codes on two bicycles near each other at a docking station, then waiting for an unsuspecting cyclist to try to unlock a bike with his or her smartphone app.

The app doesn’t work for the rider but does free up the nearby Citi Bike with the switched code, where a thief is waiting, jumps on the bicycle and rides off.

Presumably they’re using camera, printers, and stickers to swap the codes on the bikes. And presumably the victim is charged for not returning the stolen bicycle…

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End of 2021 witnessed an explosion of RDP brute-force attacks

RDP brute-force attacks continue to be one of the most used attack vectors for breaching enterprise networks, ESET’s latest Threat Report has revealed. RDP brute-force attacks escalated throughout all of 2020 and 2021, and the last four months of… Continue reading End of 2021 witnessed an explosion of RDP brute-force attacks

Exposing a Currently Active Portfolio of Rogue and Fake Tech Support Scam Domains Portfolio – An OSINT Analysis

Dear blog readers,I’ve decided to share with everyone a currently active portfolio of fake and rogue fake tech support scam domains with the idea to assist everyone in their cyber attack attribution efforts.Sample rogue fraudulent and malicious tech su… Continue reading Exposing a Currently Active Portfolio of Rogue and Fake Tech Support Scam Domains Portfolio – An OSINT Analysis

Buy now, pay later fraud, romance and cryptocurrency schemes top the list of threats this year

Experian released its annual forecast, which reveals five fraud threats for the new year. With consumers continuing to take a digital-first approach to everything from shopping, dating and investing, fraudsters are finding new and innovative ways to co… Continue reading Buy now, pay later fraud, romance and cryptocurrency schemes top the list of threats this year

COVID test related scam emails still highly popular among cybercriminals

The Omicron variant has contributed to a 521 per cent rise in COVID test related scam emails between October 2021 and January 2022, according to Barracuda Networks. Researchers concluded that this surge in ‘COVID-test’ related phishing attacks is just … Continue reading COVID test related scam emails still highly popular among cybercriminals

Deposits to illicit crypto addresses nearly doubled in 2021, Chainalysis finds

Cryptocurrency-based crime hit a new all-time high in 2021, researchers at Chainalysis said in a report published Thursday. According to the report, illicit addresses tracked by Chainalysis received $14 billion in deposits over the course of 2021, almost double the amount they collected in 2020. Rather than digital extortion, though, Chainalysis found it was actually cryptocurrency-related scams, namely investment-related fraud, and straight theft that saw the biggest jumps in 2021. Illicit revenue from scams rose by 82% in 2021 to $7.8 billion worth of cryptocurrency. Researchers attribute a large part of the growth to a boom in so-called “rug pulls,” a fraud scheme in which developers set up seemingly legitimate cryptocurrency projects with the intent to steal investors’ money and disappear. Of the over $2.8 billion lost to rug pull scams, roughly 90% can be attributed to an Istanbul-based exchange Thodex, whose CEO disappeared with users’ funds. But there are […]

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