Category Archives: The Coming Storm

Legal Threats Make Powerful Phishing Lures

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Some of the most convincing email phishing and malware attacks come disguised as nastygrams from a law firm. Such scams typically notify the recipient that he/she is being sued, and instruct them to review the attached file and respond within a few days — or else. Here’s a look at a recent spam campaign that peppered more than 100,000 business email addresses with fake legal threats harboring malware. Continue reading Legal Threats Make Powerful Phishing Lures→

A Tough Week for IP Address Scammers

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In the early days of the Internet, there was a period when Internet Protocol 4 (IPv4) addresses (e.g. 4.4.4.4) were given out like cotton candy to anyone who asked. But these days companies are queuing up to obtain new IP space from the various regional registries that periodically dole out the prized digits. With the value of a single IP hovering between $15-$25, those registries are now fighting a wave of shady brokers who specialize in securing new IP address blocks under false pretenses and then reselling to spammers. Here’s the story of one broker who fought back in the courts, and lost spectacularly.

On May 14, South Carolina U.S. Attorney Sherri Lydon filed criminal wire fraud charges against Amir Golestan, alleging he and his Charleston, S.C. based company Micfo LLC orchestrated an elaborate network of phony companies and aliases to gather more than 735,000 IPs from the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), a nonprofit which oversees IP addresses assigned to entities in the U.S., Canada, and parts of the Caribbean. Continue reading A Tough Week for IP Address Scammers→

Feds Bust Up Dark Web Hub Wall Street Market

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Federal investigators in the United States, Germany and the Netherlands announced today the arrest and charging of three German nationals and a Brazilian man as the alleged masterminds behind the Wall Street Market (WSM), one of the world’s largest dark web bazaars that allowed vendors to sell illegal drugs, counterfeit goods and malware. Now, at least one former WSM administrator is reportedly trying to extort money from WSM vendors and buyers (supposedly including Yours Truly) — in exchange for not publishing details of the transactions. Continue reading Feds Bust Up Dark Web Hub Wall Street Market→

Credit Union Sues Fintech Giant Fiserv Over Security Claims

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A Pennsylvania credit union is suing financial industry technology giant Fiserv, alleging that “baffling” security vulnerabilities in the company’s software are “wreaking havoc” on its customers. The credit union said the investigation that fueled the lawsuit was prompted by a 2018 KrebsOnSecurity report about a glaring security weakness a Fiserv platform that exposed personal and financial details of customers across hundreds of bank Web sites. Continue reading Credit Union Sues Fintech Giant Fiserv Over Security Claims→

Data: E-Retail Hacks More Lucrative Than Ever

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For many years and until quite recently, credit card data stolen from online merchants has been worth far less in the cybercrime underground than cards pilfered from hacked brick-and-mortar stores. But new data suggests that over the past year, the economics of supply-and-demand have helped to double the average price fetched by card-not-present data, meaning cybercrooks now have far more incentive than ever to target e-commerce stores. Continue reading Data: E-Retail Hacks More Lucrative Than Ever→

P2P Weakness Exposes Millions of IoT Devices

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A peer-to-peer (P2P) communications technology built into millions of security cameras and other consumer electronics includes several critical security flaws that expose the devices to eavesdropping, credential theft and remote compromise, new research has found. Continue reading P2P Weakness Exposes Millions of IoT Devices→

Annual Protest Raises $250K to Cure Krebs

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For the second year in a row, denizens of a large German-language online forum have donated more than USD $250,000 to cancer research organizations in protest of a story KrebsOnSecurity published in 2018 that unmasked the creators of Coinhive, a now-defunct cryptocurrency mining service that was massively abused by cybercriminals. Krebs is translated as “cancer” in German. Continue reading Annual Protest Raises $250K to Cure Krebs→

Alleged Child Porn Lord Faces US Extradition

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In 2013, the FBI exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Firefox to seize control over a Dark Web network of child pornography sites. The alleged owner of that ring – 33-year-old Freedom Hosting operator Eric Eoin Marques – was arrested in Ireland later that year on a U.S. warrant and has been in custody ever since. This week, Ireland’s Supreme Court cleared the way for Marques to be extradited to the United States. Continue reading Alleged Child Porn Lord Faces US Extradition→

Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords in Plain Text for Years

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Hundreds of millions of Facebook users had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by thousands of Facebook employees — in some cases going back to 2012, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Facebook says an ongoing investigation has so far found no indication that employees have abused access to this data. Continue reading Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords in Plain Text for Years→

MyEquifax.com Bypasses Credit Freeze PIN

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Most people who have frozen their credit files with Equifax have been issued a numeric Personal Identification Number (PIN) which is supposed to be required before a freeze can be lifted or thawed. Unfortunately, if you don’t already have an account at… Continue reading MyEquifax.com Bypasses Credit Freeze PIN→