Sextortion Scams Now Include Photos of Your Home

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2024 15:45:49 +0000

An old but persistent email scam known as “sextortion” has a new personalized touch: The missives, which claim that malware has captured webcam footage of recipients pleasuring themselves, now include a photo of the target’s home in a bid to make threats about publishing the videos more frightening and convincing.

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Owners of 1-Time Passcode Theft Service Plead Guilty

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2024 16:46:35 +0000

Three men in the United Kingdom have pleaded guilty to operating otp[.]agency, a once popular online service that helped attackers intercept the one-time passcodes (OTPs) that many websites require as a second authentication factor in addition to passwords. Launched in November 2019, OTP Agency was a service for intercepting one-time passwords needed to log in to various websites. Scammers would enter the target’s phone number and name, and the service would initiate an automated phone call to the target that alerts them about unauthorized activity on their account.

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When Get-Out-The-Vote Efforts Look Like Phishing

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2024 23:55:17 +0000

Multiple media reports this week warned Americans to be on guard against a new phishing scam that arrives in a text message informing recipients they are not yet registered to vote. A bit of digging reveals the missives were sent by a California political consulting firm as part of a well-meaning but potentially counterproductive get-out-the-vote effort that had all the hallmarks of a phishing campaign.

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New 0-Day Attacks Linked to China’s ‘Volt Typhoon’

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2024 14:26:41 +0000

Malicious hackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Versa Director, a software product used by many Internet and IT service providers. Researchers believe the activity is linked to Volt Typhoon, a Chinese cyber espionage group focused on infiltrating critical U.S. networks and laying the groundwork for the ability to disrupt communications between the United States and Asia during any future armed conflict with China.

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Local Networks Go Global When Domain Names Collide

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2024 14:12:31 +0000

The proliferation of new top-level domains (TLDs) has exacerbated a well-known security weakness: Many organizations set up their internal Microsoft authentication systems years ago using domain names in TLDs that didn’t exist at the time. Meaning, they are continuously sending their Windows usernames and passwords to domain names they do not control and which are freely available for anyone to register. Here’s a look at one security researcher’s efforts to map and shrink the size of this insidious problem.

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National Public Data Published Its Own Passwords

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2024 16:23:31 +0000

New details are emerging about a breach at National Public Data (NPD), a consumer data broker that recently spilled hundreds of millions of Americans’ Social Security Numbers, addresses, and phone numbers online. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that another NPD data broker which shares access to the same consumer records inadvertently published the passwords to its back-end database in a file that was freely available for download from its homepage until today.

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NationalPublicData.com Hack Exposes a Nation’s Data

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2024 22:38:36 +0000

A great many readers this month reported receiving alerts that their Social Security Number, name, address and other personal information were exposed in a breach at a little-known but aptly-named consumer data broker called NationalPublicData.com. This post examines what we know about a breach that has exposed hundreds of millions of consumer records. We’ll also take a closer look at the data broker that got hacked — a background check company founded by an actor and retired sheriff’s deputy from Florida.

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Six 0-Days Lead Microsoft’s August 2024 Patch Push

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 21:43:05 +0000

Microsoft today released updates to fix at least 90 security vulnerabilities in Windows and related software, including a whopping six zero-day flaws that are already being actively exploited by attackers.

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Cybercrime Rapper Sues Bank over Fraud Investigation

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2024 19:01:49 +0000

In January, KrebsOnSecurity wrote about rapper Punchmade Dev, whose music videos sing the praises of a cybercrime lifestyle. That story showed how Punchmade’s social media profiles promoted Punchmade-themed online stores selling bank account and payment card data. Now the Kentucky native is suing his financial institution after it blocked a $75,000 wire transfer and froze his account, citing an active law enforcement investigation.

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Low-Drama ‘Dark Angels’ Reap Record Ransoms

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2024 19:52:35 +0000

A ransomware group called Dark Angels made headlines this past week when it was revealed the crime group recently received a record $75 million data ransom payment from a Fortune 50 company. Security experts say the Dark Angels have been around since 2021, but the group doesn’t get much press because they work alone and maintain a low profile, picking one target at a time and favoring mass data theft over disrupting the victim’s operations.

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