Timeshare Owner? The Mexican Drug Cartels Want You

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2024 16:26:12 +0000

The FBI is warning timeshare owners to be wary of a prevalent telemarketing scam involving a violent Mexican drug cartel that tries to trick elderly people into believing someone wants to buy their property. This is the story of a couple who recently lost more than $50,000 to an ongoing timeshare scam that spans at least two dozen phony escrow, title and realty firms.

Read more

Scam ‘Funeral Streaming’ Groups Thrive on Facebook

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2024 13:43:51 +0000

Scammers are flooding Facebook with groups that purport to offer video streaming of funeral services for the recently deceased. Friends and family who follow the links for the streaming services are then asked to cough up their credit card information. Recently, these scammers have branched out into offering fake streaming services for nearly any kind of event advertised on Facebook. Here’s a closer look at the size of this scheme, and some findings about who may be responsible.

Read more

The Not-So-Secret Network Access Broker x999xx

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2024 16:41:34 +0000

Most accomplished cybercriminals go out of their way to separate their real names from their hacker handles. But among certain old-school Russian hackers it is not uncommon to find major players who have done little to prevent people from figuring out who they are in real life. A case study in this phenomenon is “x999xx,” the nickname chosen by a venerated Russian hacker who specializes in providing the initial network access to various ransomware groups.

Read more

KrebsOnSecurity Threatened with Defamation Lawsuit Over Fake Radaris CEO

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2024 19:16:01 +0000

On March 8, 2024, KrebsOnSecurity published a deep dive on the consumer data broker Radaris, showing how the original owners are two men in Massachusetts who operated multiple Russian language dating services and affiliate programs, in addition to a dizzying array of people-search websites. The subjects of that piece are threatening to sue KrebsOnSecurity for defamation unless the story is retracted. Meanwhile, their attorney has admitted that the person Radaris named as the CEO from its inception is a fabricated identity.

Read more

Stark Industries Solutions: An Iron Hammer in the Cloud

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 23 May 2024 23:32:43 +0000

Two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a large, mysterious new Internet hosting firm called Stark Industries Solutions materialized and quickly became the epicenter of massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government and commercial targets in Ukraine and Europe. An investigation into Stark Industries reveals it is being used as a global proxy network that conceals the true source of cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns against enemies of Russia.

Read more

How Did Authorities Identify the Alleged Lockbit Boss?

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 13 May 2024 11:26:27 +0000

Last week, the United States joined the U.K. and Australia in sanctioning and charging a Russian man named Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev as the leader of the infamous LockBit ransomware group. LockBit’s leader “LockBitSupp” claims the feds named the wrong guy, saying the charges don’t explain how they connected him to Khoroshev. This post examines the activities of Khoroshev’s many alter egos on the cybercrime forums, and tracks the career of a gifted malware author who has written and sold malicious code for the past 14 years.

Read more

CEO of Data Privacy Company Onerep.com Founded Dozens of People-Search Firms

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2024 21:13:38 +0000

The data privacy company Onerep.com bills itself as a Virginia-based service for helping people remove their personal information from almost 200 people-search websites. However, an investigation into the history of onerep.com finds this company is operating out of Belarus and Cyprus, and that its founder has launched dozens of people-search services over the years.

Read more

From Cybercrime Saul Goodman to the Russian GRU

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2024 17:10:18 +0000

In 2021, the exclusive Russian cybercrime forum Mazafaka was hacked. The leaked user database shows one of the forum’s founders was an attorney who advised Russia’s top hackers on the legal risks of their work, and what to do if they got caught. A review of this user’s hacker identities shows that during his time on the forums he served as an officer in the special forces of the GRU, the foreign military intelligence agency of the Russian Federation.

Read more