Man stole bitcoin by phishing individuals on the dark web
Michael Richo, a 35-year-old from Connecticut, had the brilliant idea of stealing bitcoin from people involved in illegal deals through dark web marketplaces. Perhaps he thought that he would be safe from law enforcement if he stuck to robbing potential criminals but, as it turns out, he was wrong. Richo’s modus operandi was as follows:…
Russia Jails Head of Notorious Hacker Group
A Moscow court on Thursday jailed the leader of a notorious hacking group for two years for breaking into the accounts of high-ranking Russian officials. Vladimir Anikeyev headed the Shaltai Boltai collective — Russian for “Humpty Dumpty” — believed to be behind high-profile hacks, including into the Twitter account of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Anikeyev…
With ransomware, pay up if you want to keep paying
A hospital CEO is contacted in the middle of the night with a dire warning. Hackers have taken control of computer systems used for patient care, CT scans, and lab work. The hacker wants money. Rather than pay the ransom, the hospital CEO enlists several experts to try to break back into the system. It…
Philippine Bank Chaos as Money Goes Missing From Accounts
A major Philippine bank shut down online transactions and cash machines on Wednesday after money went missing from accounts, triggering fears it had been hacked even as company officials said it was an internal computer error. Customers of Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) were shocked on Wednesday morning to see unauthorized withdrawals and deposits…
Ransomworm: The birth of a monster
The last few weeks have seen two substantial attacks: one massive phishing attack that leveraged Google Apps and which tricked recipients to give OAuth access to their email accounts, and a large-scale ransomware attack that blanketed almost 100 countries a week later. Now, consider the likely marriage of these two attacks, and the monster that…
Who are we kidding? WannaCry is not a first
On Friday, May 12, 2017, the world was alarmed to discover that cybercrime has reached a new record, in a widespread ransomware attack dubbed WannaCry that is believed to have caused the biggest attack of its kind ever recorded. The details of the attack are all being reported as we go, as security teams scramble…
If you downloaded HandBrake for Mac, you could be infected with Proton RAT
A mirror download server of HandBrake, a popular open source video conversion app for Mac, has been compromised, and the legitimate app .dmg file switched with a Trojanized version containing the Proton RAT. Who got infected? “Anyone who has downloaded HandBrake on Mac between [02/May/2017 14:30 UTC] and [06/May/2017 11:00 UTC] needs to verify the…
Brands increasingly targeted by false websites and phishing
DomainTools released the names of the top U.S.-based retail companies whose brands are frequently abused by criminals creating look-alike domains for phishing. The research surfaced multiple malicious domains each day spoofing Amazon, Apple, Gap, Nike, and Walmart. Cybercriminals have become adept at creating websites and emails that closely resemble the actual brand, tricking consumers into…
200 million financial services records breached in 2016, 900% increase from 2015
The financial services industry was attacked more than any other industry in 2016 – 65 percent more than the average organization across all industries, according to the IBM X-Force Research team. As a result, the number of financial services records breached skyrocketed 937 percent in 2016 to more than 200 million. While the financial services…
Cybercrime can come in any shape or size, and not always the form you’d expect
Cyberespionage is now the most common type of attack seen in manufacturing, the public sector and now education, warns the Verizon 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report. Much of this is due to the high proliferation of propriety research, prototypes and confidential personal data, which are hot-ticket items for cybercriminals. Nearly 2,000 breaches were analyzed in…