Author Archives: BrianKrebs

Diligere, Equity-Invest Are New Firms of U.K. Con Man

August 14, 2023
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John Clifton Davies, a convicted fraudster estimated to have bilked dozens of technology startups out of more than $30 million through phony investment schemes, has a brand new pair of scam companies that are busy dashing startup dreams: A fake investment firm called Equity-Invest[.]ch, and Diligere[.]co.uk, a scam due diligence company that Equity-Invest insists all investment partners use.

A native of the United Kingdom, Mr. Davies absconded from justice before being convicted on multiple counts of fraud in 2015. Prior to his conviction, Davies served 16 months in jail before being cleared on suspicion of murdering his third wife on their honeymoon in India.

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, August 2023 Edition

August 8, 2023
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Microsoft Corp. today issued software updates to plug more than 70 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related products, including a patch that addresses multiple zero-day vulnerabilities currently being exploited in the wild.

Meet the Brains Behind the Malware-Friendly AI Chat Service ‘WormGPT’

August 8, 2023
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WormGPT, a private new chatbot service advertised as a way to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help write malicious software without all the pesky prohibitions on such activity enforced by ChatGPT and Google Bard, has started adding restrictions on how the service can be used. Faced with customers trying to use WormGPT to create ransomware and phishing scams, the 23-year-old Portuguese programmer who created the project now says his service is slowly morphing into “a more controlled environment.”

The large language models (LLMs) made by ChatGPT parent OpenAI or Google or Microsoft all have various safety measures designed to prevent people from abusing them for nefarious purposes — such as creating malware or hate speech. In contrast, WormGPT has promoted itself as a new LLM that was created specifically for cybercrime activities.

Teach a Man to Phish and He’s Set for Life

August 4, 2023
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One frustrating aspect of email phishing is the frequency with which scammers fall back on tried-and-true methods that really have no business working these days. Like attaching a phishing email to a traditional, clean email message, or leveraging link redirects on LinkedIn, or abusing an encoding method that makes it easy to disguise booby-trapped Microsoft Windows files as relatively harmless documents.

Russia Sends Cybersecurity CEO to Jail for 14 Years

July 26, 2023
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The Russian government today handed down a treason conviction and 14-year prison sentence on Iyla Sachkov, the former founder and CEO of one of Russia’s largest cybersecurity firms. Sachkov, 37, has been detained for nearly two years under charges that the Kremlin has kept classified and hidden from public view, and he joins a growing roster of former Russian cybercrime fighters who are now serving hard time for farcical treason convictions.

Who and What is Behind the Malware Proxy Service SocksEscort?

July 25, 2023
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Researchers this month uncovered a two-year-old Linux-based remote access trojan dubbed AVrecon that enslaves Internet routers into botnet that bilks online advertisers and performs password-spraying attacks. Now new findings reveal that AVrecon is the malware engine behind a 12-year-old service called SocksEscort, which rents hacked residential and small business devices to cybercriminals looking to hide their true location online.

Few Fortune 100 Firms List Security Pros in Their Executive Ranks

July 21, 2023
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Many things have changed since 2018, such as the names of the companies in the Fortune 100 list. But one aspect of that vaunted list that hasn’t shifted much since is that very few of these companies list any security professionals within their top executive ranks.

The next time you receive a breach notification letter that invariably says a company you trusted places a top priority on customer security and privacy, consider this: Only four of the Fortune 100 companies currently list a security professional in the executive leadership pages of their websites. This is actually down from five of the Fortune 100 in 2018, the last time KrebsOnSecurity performed this analysis.

LeakedSource Owner Quit Ashley Madison a Month Before 2015 Hack

July 18, 2023
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[This is Part III in a series on research conducted for a recent Hulu documentary on the 2015 hack of marital infidelity website AshleyMadison.com.]

In 2019, a Canadian company called Defiant Tech Inc. pleaded guilty to running LeakedSource[.]com, a service that sold access to billions of passwords and other data exposed in countless data breaches. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that the owner of Defiant Tech, a 32-year-old Ontario man named Jordan Evan Bloom, was hired in late 2014 as a developer for the marital infidelity site AshleyMadison.com. Bloom resigned from AshleyMadison citing health reasons in June 2015 — less than one month before unidentified hackers stole data on 37 million users — and launched LeakedSource three months later.

SEO Expert Hired and Fired By Ashley Madison Turned on Company, Promising Revenge

July 13, 2023
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[This is Part II of a story published here last week on reporting that went into a new Hulu documentary series on the 2015 Ashley Madison hack.]

It was around 9 p.m. on Sunday, July 19, when I received a message through the contact form on KrebsOnSecurity.com that the marital infidelity website AshleyMadison.com had been hacked. The message contained links to confidential Ashley Madison documents, and included a manifesto that said a hacker group calling itself the Impact Team was prepared to leak data on all 37 million users unless Ashley Madison and a sister property voluntarily closed down within 30 days.