A Little Sunshine

IndependentKrebs

How Internet Savvy are Your Leaders?

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2018 20:40:05 +0000

Back in April 2015, I tweeted about receiving a letter via snail mail suggesting the search engine rankings for a domain registered in my name would suffer if I didn’t pay a bill for some kind of dubious-looking service I’d never heard of. But it wasn’t until the past week that it become clear how many organizations — including towns, cities and political campaigns — actually have fallen for this brazen scam.

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IndependentKrebs

Bomb Threat Hoaxer, DDos Boss Gets 3 Years

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2018 01:38:49 +0000

The alleged ringleader of a gang of cyber hooligans that made bomb threats against hundreds of schools and launched debilitating denial-of-service attacks against Web sites (including KrebsOnSecurity on multiple occasions) has been sentenced to three years in a U.K. prison, and faces the possibility of additional charges from U.S.-based law enforcement officials. 

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IndependentKrebs

A Breach, or Just a Forced Password Reset?

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2018 21:45:51 +0000

Software giant Citrix Systems recently forced a password reset for many users of its Sharefile content collaboration service, warning it would be doing this on a regular basis in response to password-guessing attacks that target people who re-use passwords across multiple Web sites. Many Sharefile users interpreted this as a breach at Citrix and/or Sharefile, but the company maintains that’s not the case. Here’s a closer look at what happened, and some ideas about how to avoid a repeat of this scenario going forward.

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IndependentKrebs

What the Marriott Breach Says About Security

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2018 21:16:13 +0000

We don’t yet know the root cause(s) that forced Marriott this week to disclose a four-year-long breach involving the personal and financial information of 500 million guests of its Starwood hotel properties. But anytime we see such a colossal intrusion go undetected for so long, the ultimate cause is usually a failure to adopt the most important principle in cybersecurity defense that applies to both corporations and consumers: Assume you are compromised.

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IndependentKrebs

Half of all Phishing Sites Now Have the Padlock

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2018 14:57:53 +0000

Maybe you were once advised to “look for the padlock” as a means of telling legitimate e-commerce sites from phishing or malware traps. Unfortunately, this has never been more useless advice. New research indicates that half of all phishing scams are now hosted on Web sites whose Internet address includes the padlock and begins with “https://”.

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IndependentKrebs

USPS Site Exposed Data on 60 Million Users

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2018 17:10:18 +0000

U.S. Postal Service just fixed a security weakness that allowed anyone who has an account at usps.com to view account details for some 60 million other users, and in some cases to modify account details on their behalf. KrebsOnSecurity was contacted last week by a researcher who discovered the problem, but who asked to remain anonymous. The researcher said he informed the USPS about his finding more than a year ago yet never received a response. After confirming his findings, this author contacted the USPS, which promptly addressed the issue.

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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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