Russian Cybercrime Boss Burkov Pleads Guilty
Aleksei Burkov, an ultra-connected Russian hacker once described as “an asset of supreme importance” to Moscow, has pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to running a site that sold stolen payment card data and to administering a highly secretive...
Does Your Domain Have a Registry Lock?
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...
Apple Addresses iPhone 11 Location Privacy Concern
Apple is rolling out a new update to its iOS operating system that addresses the location privacy issue on iPhone 11 devices that was first detailed here last month.
Beta versions of iOS 13.3.1 include a new setting that lets...
DDoS Mitigation Firm Founder Admits to DDoS
A Georgia man who co-founded a service designed to protect companies from crippling distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks has pleaded to paying a DDoS-for-hire service to launch attacks against others.
Tucker Preston, 22, of Macon, Ga., pleaded guilty last week in...
Patch Tuesday, January 2020 Edition
Microsoft today released updates to plug 50 security holes in various flavors of Windows and related software. The patch batch includes a fix for a flaw in Windows 10 and server equivalents of this operating system that prompted an...
Cryptic Rumblings Ahead of First 2020 Patch Tuesday
Sources tell KrebsOnSecurity that Microsoft Corp. is slated to release a software update on Tuesday to fix an extraordinarily serious security vulnerability in a core cryptographic component present in all versions of Windows. Those sources say Microsoft has quietly shipped...
Phishing for Apples, Bobbing for Links
Anyone searching for a primer on how to spot clever phishing links need look no further than those targeting customers of Apple, whose brand by many measures remains among the most-targeted. Past stories here have examined how scammers working...
Alleged Member of Neo-Nazi Swatting Group Charged
Federal investigators on Friday arrested a Virginia man accused of being part of a neo-Nazi group that targeted hundreds of people in “swatting” attacks, wherein fake bomb threats, hostage situations and other violent scenarios were phoned in to police...
Senators Prod FCC to Act on SIM Swapping
Crooks have stolen tens of millions of dollars and other valuable commodities from thousands of consumers via “SIM swapping,” a particularly invasive form of fraud that involves tricking a target’s mobile carrier into transferring someone’s wireless service to a...
Tricky Phish Angles for Persistence, Not Passwords
Late last year saw the re-emergence of a nasty phishing tactic that allows the attacker to gain full access to a user’s data stored in the cloud without actually stealing the account password. The phishing lure starts with a...
The Hidden Cost of Ransomware: Wholesale Password Theft
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...
Happy 10th Birthday, KrebsOnSecurity.com
Today marks the 10th anniversary of KrebsOnSecurity.com! Over the past decade, the site has featured more than 1,800 stories focusing mainly on cybercrime, computer security and user privacy concerns. And what a decade it has been.
Stories here have exposed...
Ransomware at IT Services Provider Synoptek
Synoptek, a California business that provides cloud hosting and IT management services to more than a thousand customer nationwide, suffered a ransomware attack this week that has disrupted operations for many of its clients, according to sources. The company...
Nuclear Bot Author Arrested in Sextortion Case
Last summer, a wave of sextortion emails began flooding inboxes around the world. The spammers behind this scheme claimed they’d hacked your computer and recorded videos of you watching porn, and promised to release the embarrassing footage to all...
Ransomware Gangs Now Outing Victim Businesses That Don’t Pay Up
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...
DEF CON China conference put on hold due to coronavirus outbreak
DEF CON team is hoping that the 2019-nCoV outbreak will improve and they can go on as planned, or reschedule.
Remember the Clipper chip? NSA’s botched backdoor-for-Feds from 1993 still influences today’s encryption debates
We'll laugh at today's mandated holes in the same way we laugh at those from 25 years ago Enigma More than a quarter century after its introduction, the failed rollout of hardware deliberately backdoored by the NSA is still...
Average Ransomware Payments More Than Doubled in Q4 2019
Ransomware attackers collected an average of around $84,000 from victim organizations, up from $41,000 in Q3 of 2018, Coveware says.
Seven Years Later, Scores of EAS Systems sit Un-patched, Vulnerable
Two years after a false EAS alert about an incoming ICBM sowed terror in Hawaii, and seven years after security researchers warned about insecure, Internet connected Emergency Alert System (EAS) hardware, scores of the devices across the U.S. remain...
One Small Fix Would Curb Stingray Surveillance
The technology needed to limit stingrays is clear—but good luck getting telecoms on board.
