Lamborghini Carjackers Lured by $243M Cyberheist

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2024 17:36:27 +0000

The parents of a 19-year-old Connecticut honors student accused of taking part in a $243 million cryptocurrency heist in August were carjacked a week later, while out house-hunting in a brand new Lamborghini. Prosecutors say the couple was beaten and briefly kidnapped by six young men who traveled from Florida as part of a botched plan to hold the parents for ransom.

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A Single Cloud Compromise Can Feed an Army of AI Sex Bots

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2024 13:05:52 +0000

Organizations that get relieved of credentials to their cloud environments can quickly find themselves part of a disturbing new trend: Cybercriminals using stolen cloud credentials to operate and resell sexualized AI-powered chat services. Researchers say these illicit chat bots, which use custom jailbreaks to bypass content filtering, often veer into darker role-playing scenarios, including child sexual exploitation and rape.

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Crooked Cops, Stolen Laptops & the Ghost of UGNazi

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2024 21:33:10 +0000

A California man accused of failing to pay taxes on tens of millions of dollars allegedly earned from cybercrime also paid local police officers hundreds of thousands of dollars to help him extort, intimidate and silence rivals and former business partners, a new indictment charges. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that many of the man’s alleged targets were members of UGNazi, a hacker group behind multiple high-profile breaches and cyberattacks back in 2012.

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U.S. Indicts 2 Top Russian Hackers, Sanctions Cryptex

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2024 14:54:07 +0000

The United States today unveiled sanctions and indictments against the alleged proprietor of Joker’s Stash, a now-defunct cybercrime store that peddled tens of millions of payment cards stolen in some of the largest data breaches of the past decade. The government also indicted a top Russian cybercriminal known as Taleon, whose cryptocurrency exchange Cryptex has evolved into one of Russia’s most active money laundering networks.

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Timeshare Owner? The Mexican Drug Cartels Want You

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2024 16:26:12 +0000

The FBI is warning timeshare owners to be wary of a prevalent telemarketing scam involving a violent Mexican drug cartel that tries to trick elderly people into believing someone wants to buy their property. This is the story of a couple who recently lost more than $50,000 to an ongoing timeshare scam that spans at least two dozen phony escrow, title and realty firms.

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This Windows PowerShell Phish Has Scary Potential

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2024 19:39:09 +0000

Many GitHub users this week received a novel phishing email warning of critical security holes in their code. Those who clicked the link for details were asked to distinguish themselves from bots by pressing a combination of keyboard keys that causes Microsoft Windows to download password-stealing malware. While it’s unlikely that many programmers fell for this scam, it’s notable because less targeted versions of it are likely to be far more successful against the average Windows user.

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Scam ‘Funeral Streaming’ Groups Thrive on Facebook

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2024 13:43:51 +0000

Scammers are flooding Facebook with groups that purport to offer video streaming of funeral services for the recently deceased. Friends and family who follow the links for the streaming services are then asked to cough up their credit card information. Recently, these scammers have branched out into offering fake streaming services for nearly any kind of event advertised on Facebook. Here’s a closer look at the size of this scheme, and some findings about who may be responsible.

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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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