Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sun, 02 Jul 2017 16:14:42 +0000
Regulators at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are asking for public comment on the effectiveness of the CAN-SPAM Act, a 14-year-old federal law that seeks to crack down on unsolicited commercial email. Judging from an unscientific survey by this author, the FTC is bound to get an earful.
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Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2017 20:32:06 +0000
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the automated teller machine — better known to most people as the ATM or cash machine. Thanks to the myriad methods thieves have devised to fleece unsuspecting cash machine users over the years, there are now more ways than ever to get ripped off at the ATM. Think you’re good at spotting the various scams? A newly released ATM fraud inspection guide may help you test your knowledge.
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Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2017 20:18:43 +0000
A new strain of ransomware dubbed “Petya” is worming its way around the world with alarming speed. The malware appears to be spreading using a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that the software giant patched in March 2017 — the same bug that was exploited by the recent and prolific WannaCry ransomware strain.
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Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2017 15:24:16 +0000
Several times a week my cell phone receives the telephonic equivalent of spam: A robocall. On each occasion the call seems to come from a local number, but when I answer there is that telltale pause followed by an automated voice pitching some product or service. So when I heard from a reader who chose to hang on the line and see where one of these robocalls led him, I decided to dig deeper. This is the story of that investigation. Hopefully, it will inspire readers to do their own digging and help bury this annoying and intrusive practice.
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Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2017 14:09:22 +0000
Online extortion, tech support scams and phishing attacks that spoof the boss were among the most costly cyber scams reported by consumers and businesses last year, according to new figures from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). The IC3 report released Thursday correctly identifies some of the most prevalent and insidious forms of cybercrimes today, but the total financial losses tied to each crime type also underscore how infrequently victims actually report such crimes to law enforcement.
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Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2017 14:29:11 +0000
Conventional wisdom says one reason so many hackers seem to hail from Russia and parts of the former Soviet Union is that these countries have traditionally placed a much greater emphasis than educational institutions in the West on teaching information technology in middle and high schools, and yet they lack a Silicon Valley-like pipeline to help talented IT experts channel their skills into high-paying jobs. This post examines the first part of that assumption by examining a breadth of open-source data. The supply side of that conventional wisdom seems to be supported by an analysis of educational data from both the U.S. and Russia, which indicates there are several stark and important differences between how American students are taught and tested on IT subjects versus their counterparts in Eastern Europe.
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Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2017 14:07:08 +0000
The Buckle Inc., a clothier that operates more than 450 stores in 44 U.S. states, disclosed Friday that its retail locations were hit by malicious software designed to steal customer credit card data. The disclosure came hours after KrebsOnSecurity contacted the company regarding reports from sources in the financial sector about a possible breach at the retailer.
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Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2017 14:35:27 +0000
For several months I’ve been poking at a decent-sized spam botnet that appears to be used mainly for promoting adult dating sites. Having hit a wall in my research, I decided it might be good to publish what I’ve unearthed so far to see if this dovetails with any other research out there. In late October 2016, an anonymous source shared with KrebsOnSecurity.com a list of nearly 100 URLs that — when loaded into a Firefox browser — each displayed what appeared to be a crude but otherwise effective “counter” designed to report in real time how many “bots” were reporting in for duty. Here’s a set of archived screenshots of those counters illustrating how these various botnet controllers keep a running tab of how many “activebots” — hacked servers set up to relay spam — are sitting idly by and waiting for instructions.
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