Cybercrime & Hacking – Page 9 – Computer Security Articles

The discovery of malware on computers and servers of several Polish banks has put the country’s financial sector on alert over potential compromises.

Polish media reported last week that the IT security teams at many Polish banks have been busy recently searching their systems for a particular strain of malware after several unnamed banks found it on their computers.

It’s not clear what the malware’s end goal is, but in at least one case it was used to exfiltrate data from a bank’s computer to an external server. The nature of the stolen information could not be immediately determined because it was encrypted, Polish IT news blog Zaufana Trzecia Strona reported Friday.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Ransomware soars in 2016, while malware declines

February 7, 2017 admin Cybercrime & Hacking, Internet of Things, Security

A global cyberthreat report released Tuesday found that 2016 was a mixed bag: malware was down slightly, but ransomware attacks soared, up 167 times the number recorded in 2015.

In addition to that huge increase in ransomware, 2016 saw a new line of cybercrime from a large-scale DDoS attack through internet of things devices. The principal case occurred in October when the Mirai botnet attacked unprotected IoT devices, such as internet-ready cameras, resulting in a DDoS attack on Dyn servers.

The 2016 report, by cybersecurity company SonicWall, looked at data from daily network feeds sent from more than 1 million sensors in nearly 200 countries.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Hacker hijacks thousands of publicly exposed printers to warn owners

February 6, 2017 admin Cybercrime & Hacking, Security

Following recent research that showed many printer models are vulnerable to attacks, a hacker decided to prove the point and forced thousands of publicly exposed printers to spew out rogue messages.

The messages included ASCII art depicting robots and warned that the printers had been compromised and they were part of a botnet. The hacker, who uses the online alias Stackoverflowin, later said that the botnet claim was not true and that his efforts served only to raise awareness about the risks of leaving printers exposed to the internet.

Stackoverflowin claims to be a high school student from the U.K. who is interested in security research. He said that for the most part he simply sent print jobs using the Line Printer Daemon (LPD), the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) and the RAW protocol on communications port 9100 to printers that didn’t require authentication.

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ComputerWorld Independent

5 shocking new threats to your personal data

February 4, 2017 admin Cybercrime & Hacking, Data Privacy, Security

I’m not paranoid. Tinfoil hats aren’t my scene.

But watch out! In just the past month, the internet and smartphones have come up with five new and surprising ways to steal or expose our personal data.

Of course, these new concerns can now be added to all the old ones. Companies like Google and Facebook still track you and harvest personal data. Hackers still want to steal your data. And the National Security Agency is still out there doing its thing.

And now, these five new trends reveal that your security and privacy could be compromised in ways you probably never imagined.

1. Fingerprints can be stolen from selfies

Researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Informatics (NII) announced recently that your fingerprints could be stolen from photos of your fingers, and the prints could then be re-created and used to bypass biometric security systems.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Hackers seek company insiders on the black market

February 2, 2017 admin Cybercrime & Hacking, Financial Services IT, Security

If you’re the CEO of a company, here’s another threat you need to worry about: hackers trying to recruit your employees for insider-related crimes.

Researchers at security firms RedOwl and IntSights have noticed growing activity from online black market dealers trying to recruit company employees for insider trading and cashing out stolen credit card numbers.

These dealers are appearing on underground forums located on the dark web, which are accessible through Tor, a browser designed for anonymous web surfing, according to the researchers, who published their findings on Tuesday.

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ComputerWorld Independent

In treason case, Russia alleges security experts aided U.S.

February 1, 2017 admin Cybercrime & Hacking, Security

Two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and a cybercrime investigator from Kaspersky Lab have reportedly been charged with treason for helping U.S. intelligence services.

The arrests of Ruslan Stoyanov, the head of the computer incidents investigation team at Kaspersky, and Sergei Mikhailov, the deputy head of the Information Security Center at the FSB, happened in early December and were reported in the Russian media last week.

Since then, the arrest of a third FSB officer named Dmitry Dokuchayev, who also worked for the agency’s Information Security Center, came to light, and the investigation is said to have targeted even more people.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Police lost 8 years of evidence in ransomware attack

January 30, 2017 admin Cybercrime & Hacking, Malware & Vulnerabilities, Security

Police in Cockrell Hill, a community in southwest Dallas, admitted to losing digital evidence from as far back as 2009 after the department’s server was compromised with ransomware.

Cockrell Hill Police Department Chief Stephen Barlag said, “As a result, all bodycam video, some photos, some in-car video, and some police department surveillance video were lost.”

Immediately, the police blamed Russian hackers, but Barlag later told WFAA that experts told him it “more likely originated in Ukraine.” The official press release, however, states, “It is unknown for certain where the virus originated from.”

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ComputerWorld Independent

Five arrested for hacking into ATMs and stealing $3.2 million

January 27, 2017 admin Cybercrime & Hacking, Malware & Vulnerabilities, Security

Law enforcement authorities from Europe and Asia have arrested five members of an international cybercriminal group that specialized in hacking into automated teller machine (ATMs).

The investigation began in early 2016, according to Europol. Three suspects were arrested in Taiwan, one in Romania, and one in Belarus. Most of them had multiple citizenships and could travel easily between countries, the agency said Friday.

Hacking into ATMs to steal money is nothing new, and there are malware programs built specifically for such machines that allow criminals to withdraw money using hidden commands.

To infect ATMs with such malware most attackers either receive help from bank insiders or buy service keys that can be used to open the front panels of ATMs and access their communications ports.

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