Ne’er-Do-Well News

IndependentKrebs

Will the Real Joker’s Stash Come Forward?

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 29 May 2018 16:33:34 +0000

For as long as scam artists have been around so too have opportunistic thieves who specialize in ripping off other scam artists. This is the story about a group of Pakistani Web site designers who apparently have made an impressive living impersonating some of the most popular and well known “carding” markets, or online stores that sell stolen credit cards.

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IndependentKrebs

3 Charged In Fatal Kansas ‘Swatting’ Attack

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 17:45:52 +0000

Federal prosecutors have charged three men with carrying out a deadly hoax known as “swatting,” in which perpetrators call or message a target’s local 911 operators claiming a fake hostage situation or a bomb threat in progress at the target’s address — with the expectation that local police may respond to the scene with deadly force. While only one of the three men is accused of making the phony call to police that got an innocent man shot and killed, investigators say the other two men’s efforts to taunt and deceive one another ultimately helped point the gun.

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IndependentKrebs

DDoS-for-Hire Service Webstresser Dismantled

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 17:41:37 +0000

Authorities in the U.S., U.K. and the Netherlands on Tuesday took down popular online attack-for-hire service WebStresser.org and arrested its alleged administrators. Investigators say that prior to the takedown, the service had more than 136,000 registered users and was responsible for launching somewhere between four and six million attacks over the past three years.

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IndependentKrebs

Omitting the “o” in .com Could Be Costly

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2018 13:08:16 +0000

Take care when typing a domain name into a browser address bar, because it’s far too easy to fat-finger a key and wind up somewhere you don’t want to go. For example, if you try to visit some of the most popular destinations on the Web but omit the “o” in .com (and type .cm instead), there’s a good chance your browser will be bombarded with malware alerts and other misleading messages — potentially even causing your computer to lock up completely. As it happens, many of these domains appear tied to a marketing company whose CEO is a convicted felon and once self-proclaimed “Spam King.”

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IndependentKrebs

Bot Roundup: Avalanche, Kronos, NanoCore

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2018 19:10:52 +0000

It’s been a busy few weeks in cybercrime news, justifying updates to a couple of cases we’ve been following closely at KrebsOnSecurity. In Ukraine, the alleged ringleader of the Avalanche malware spam botnet was arrested after eluding authorities in the wake of a global cybercrime crackdown there in 2016. Separately, a case that was hailed as a test of whether programmers can be held accountable for how customers use their product turned out poorly for 27-year-old programmer Taylor Huddleston, who was sentenced to almost three years in prison for making and marketing a complex spyware program.

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IndependentKrebs

U.S. Arrests 13, Charges 36 in ‘Infraud’ Cybercrime Forum Bust

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2018 18:04:22 +0000

The U.S. Justice Department announced charges on Wednesday against three dozen individuals thought to be key members of ‘Infraud,” a long-running cybercrime forum that federal prosecutors say cost consumers more than a half billion dollars. In conjunction with the forum takedown, 13 alleged Infraud members from the United States and six other countries were arrested. Started in October 2010, Infraud was short for “In Fraud We Trust,” and collectively the forum referred to itself as the “Ministry of Fraudulently [sic] Affairs.” As a mostly English-language fraud forum, Infraud attracted nearly 11,000 members from around the globe who sold, traded and bought everything from stolen identities and credit card accounts to ATM skimmers, botnet hosting and malicious software.

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IndependentKrebs

Alleged Spam Kingpin ‘Severa’ Extradited to US

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2018 18:28:30 +0000

Peter Yuryevich Levashov, a 37-year-old Russian computer programmer thought to be one of the world’s most notorious spam kingpins, has been extradited to the United States to face federal hacking and spamming charges. Levashov, who allegedly went by the hacker name “Peter Severa,” or “Peter of the North,” hails from St. Petersburg in northern Russia, but he was arrested last year while in Barcelona, Spain with his family. Authorities have long suspected he is the cybercriminal behind the once powerful spam botnet known as Waledac (a.k.a. “Kelihos”), a now-defunct malware strain responsible for sending more than 1.5 billion spam, phishing and malware attacks each day.

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