The Coming Storm

IndependentKrebs

Pay Up, Or We’ll Make Google Ban Your Ads

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2020 14:13:06 +0000

A new email-based extortion scheme apparently is making the rounds, targeting Web site owners serving banner ads through Google’s AdSense program. In this scam, the fraudsters demand bitcoin in exchange for a promise not to flood the publisher’s ads with so much bot and junk traffic that Google’s automated anti-fraud systems suspend the user’s AdSense account for suspicious traffic.

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IndependentKrebs

Dangerous Domain Corp.com Goes Up for Sale

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2020 17:32:04 +0000

As an early domain name investor, Mike O’Connor had by 1994 snatched up several choice online destinations, including bar.com, cafes.com, grill.com, place.com, pub.com and television.com. Some he sold over the years, but for the past 26 years O’Connor refused to auction perhaps the most sensitive domain in his stable — corp.com. It is sensitive because years of testing shows whoever wields it would have access to an unending stream of passwords, email and other proprietary data belonging to hundreds of thousands of systems at major companies around the globe.

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IndependentKrebs

Wawa Breach May Have Compromised More Than 30 Million Payment Cards

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2020 20:12:16 +0000

In late December 2019, fuel and convenience store chain Wawa Inc. said a nine-month-long breach of its payment card processing systems may have led to the theft of card data from customers who visited any of its 850 locations nationwide. Now, fraud experts say the first batch of card data stolen from Wawa customers is being sold at one of the underground’s most popular crime shops, which claims to have 30 million records to peddle from a new nationwide breach.

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IndependentKrebs

Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2020 16:37:11 +0000

If you’re running a business online, few things can be as disruptive or destructive to your brand as someone stealing your company’s domain name and doing whatever they wish with it. Even so, most major Web site owners aren’t taking full advantage of the security tools available to protect their domains from being hijacked. Here’s the story of one recent victim who was doing almost everything possible to avoid such a situation and still had a key domain stolen by scammers.

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IndependentKrebs

The Hidden Cost of Ransomware: Wholesale Password Theft

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2020 18:17:21 +0000

Organizations in the throes of cleaning up after a ransomware outbreak typically will change passwords for all user accounts that have access to any email systems, servers and desktop workstations within their network. But all too often, ransomware victims fail to grasp that the crooks behind these attacks can and frequently do siphon every single password stored on each infected endpoint. The result of this oversight may offer attackers a way back into the affected organization, access to financial and healthcare accounts, or — worse yet — key tools for attacking the victim’s various business partners and clients.

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IndependentKrebs

Ransomware Gangs Now Outing Victim Businesses That Don’t Pay Up

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2019 02:21:23 +0000

As if the scourge of ransomware wasn’t bad enough already: Several prominent purveyors of ransomware have signaled they plan to start publishing data stolen from victims who refuse to pay up. To make matters worse, one ransomware gang has now created a public Web site identifying recent victim companies that have chosen to rebuild their operations instead of acquiescing to their tormentors.

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IndependentKrebs

It’s Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 02:08:55 +0000

Many readers probably believe they can trust links and emails coming from U.S. federal government domain names, or else assume there are at least more stringent verification requirements involved in obtaining a .gov domain versus a commercial one ending in .com or .org. But a recent experience suggests this trust may be severely misplaced, and that it is relatively straightforward for anyone to obtain their very own .gov domain.

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