The Coming Storm

IndependentKrebs

Apple Phone Phishing Scams Getting Better

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2019 19:21:40 +0000

A new phone-based phishing scam that spoofs Apple Inc. is likely to fool quite a few people. It starts with an automated call that display’s Apple’s logo, address and real phone number, warning about a data breach at the company. The scary part is that if the recipient is an iPhone user who then requests a call back from Apple’s legitimate customer support Web page, the fake call gets indexed in the iPhone’s “recent calls” list as a previous call from the legitimate Apple Support line.

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IndependentKrebs

That Domain You Forgot to Renew? Yeah, it’s Now Stealing Credit Cards

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2018 16:26:39 +0000

If you own a domain name that gets decent traffic and you fail to pay its annual renewal fee, chances are this mistake will be costly for you and for others. Lately, neglected domains have been getting scooped up by crooks who use them to set up fake e-commerce sites that steal credit card details from unwary shoppers.

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IndependentKrebs

U.S. Secret Service Warns ID Thieves are Abusing USPS’s Mail Scanning Service

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2018 07:28:45 +0000

A year ago, KrebsOnSecurity warned that “Informed Delivery,” a new offering from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) that lets residents view scanned images of all incoming mail, was likely to be abused by identity thieves and other fraudsters unless the USPS beefed up security around the program and made it easier for people to opt out. This week, the U.S. Secret Service issued an internal alert warning that many of its field offices have reported crooks are indeed using Informed Delivery to commit various identity theft and credit card fraud schemes.

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IndependentKrebs

Busting SIM Swappers and SIM Swap Myths

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 07 Nov 2018 05:49:37 +0000

KrebsOnSecurity recently had a chance to interview members of the REACT Task Force, a team of law enforcement officers and prosecutors based in Santa Clara, Calif. that has been tracking down individuals engaged in unauthorized “SIM swaps” — a complex form of mobile phone fraud that is often used to steal large amounts of cryptocurrencies and other items of value from victims. Snippets from that fascinating conversation are recounted below, and punctuated by accounts from a recent victim who lost more than $100,000 after his mobile phone number was hijacked.

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IndependentKrebs

Who’s In Your Online Shopping Cart?

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2018 19:10:06 +0000

Crooks who hack online merchants to steal payment card data are constantly coming up with crafty ways to hide their malicious code on Web sites. In Internet ages past, this often meant obfuscating it as giant blobs of gibberish text that is obvious even to the untrained eye. These days, a compromised e-commerce site is more likely to be seeded with a tiny snippet of code that invokes a hostile domain which appears harmless or that is virtually indistinguishable from the hacked site’s own domain.

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IndependentKrebs

Supply Chain Security 101: An Expert’s View

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2018 01:03:12 +0000

Earlier this month I spoke at a cybersecurity conference in Albany, N.Y. alongside Tony Sager, senior vice president and chief evangelist at the Center for Internet Security and a former bug hunter at the U.S. National Security Agency. We  talked at length about many issues, including supply chain security, and I asked Sager whether he’d heard anything about rumors that Supermicro — a high tech firm in San Jose, Calif. — had allegedly inserted hardware backdoors in technology sold to a number of American companies.

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IndependentKrebs

Naming & Shaming Web Polluters: Xiongmai

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2018 00:41:56 +0000

What do we do with a company that regularly pumps metric tons of virtual toxic sludge onto the Internet and yet refuses to clean up their act? If ever there were a technology giant that deserved to be named and shamed for polluting the Web, it is Xiongmai — a Chinese maker of electronic parts that power a huge percentage of cheap digital video recorders (DVRs) and Internet-connected security cameras.

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IndependentKrebs

When Security Researchers Pose as Cybercrooks, Who Can Tell the Difference?

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2018 23:42:24 +0000

A ridiculous number of companies are exposing some or all of their proprietary and customer data by putting it in the cloud without any kind of authentication needed to read, alter or destroy it. When cybercriminals are the first to discover these missteps, usually the outcome is a demand for money in return for the stolen data. But when these screw-ups are unearthed by security professionals seeking to make a name for themselves, the resulting publicity often can leave the breached organization wishing they’d instead been quietly extorted by anonymous crooks.

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