The Coming Storm

IndependentKrebs

Crooks Continue to Exploit GoDaddy Hole

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2019 19:12:25 +0000

Godaddy.com, the world’s largest domain name registrar, recently addressed an authentication weakness that cybercriminals were using to blast out spam through legitimate, dormant domains. But several more recent malware spam campaigns suggest GoDaddy’s fix hasn’t gone far enough, and that scammers likely still have a sizable arsenal of hijacked GoDaddy domains at their disposal.

Read More
IndependentKrebs

How the U.S. Govt. Shutdown Harms Security

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2019 17:51:22 +0000

The ongoing partial U.S. federal government shutdown is having a tangible, negative impact on cybercrime investigations, according to interviews with federal law enforcement investigators and a report issued this week by a group representing the interests of FBI agents. Even if lawmakers move forward on new proposals to reopen the government, sources say the standoff is likely have serious repercussions for federal law enforcement agencies for years to come. One federal agent with more than 20 years on the job told KrebsOnSecurity that the shutdown “is crushing our ability to take the fight to cyber criminals.”

Read More
IndependentKrebs

Bomb Threat, Sextortion Spammers Abused Weakness at GoDaddy.com

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2019 02:44:28 +0000

Two of the most disruptive and widely-received spam email campaigns over the past few months — including an ongoing sextortion email scam and a bomb threat hoax that shut down dozens of schools, businesses and government buildings late last year — were made possible thanks to an authentication weakness at GoDaddy.com, the world’s largest domain name registrar, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Perhaps more worryingly, experts warn this same weakness that let spammers hijack domains registered through GoDaddy also affects a great many other major Internet service providers, and is actively being abused to launch phishing and malware attacks which leverage dormant Web site names currently owned and controlled by some of the world’s most trusted corporate names and brands.

Read More
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.

Read More
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.

Read More
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.

Read More
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.

Read More
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.

Read More