Author Archives: BrianKrebs

Spike in ATM Skimming in Mexico?

July 22, 2015

Several sources in the financial industry say they are seeing a spike in fraud on customer cards used at ATMs in Mexico. The reason behind that apparent spike hopefully will be fodder for another story. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at a pair of ATM skimming devices that were recently found attached to a cash machine in Puerto Vallarta — a popular tourist destination on Mexico’s Pacific coast.

Experian Hit With Class Action Over ID Theft Service

July 21, 2015

Big-three credit bureau Experian is the target of a class-action lawsuit just filed in California. The suit alleges that Experian negligently violated consumer protection laws when it failed to detect for nearly 10 months that a customer of its data broker subsidiary was a scammer who ran a criminal service that resold consumer data to identity thieves.

Online Cheating Site AshleyMadison Hacked

July 19, 2015

Large caches of data stolen from online cheating site AshleyMadison.com have been posted online by an individual or group that claims to have completely compromised the company’s user databases, financial records and other proprietary information. The still-unfolding leak could be… Read More »

The Darkode Cybercrime Forum, Up Close

July 15, 2015

By now, many of you loyal KrebsOnSecurity readers have seen stories in the mainstream press about the coordinated global law enforcement takedown of Darkode[dot]me, an English-language cybercrime forum that served as a breeding ground for botnets, malware and just about every other form of virtual badness. This post is an attempt to distill several years’ worth of lurking on this forum into a narrative that hopefully sheds light on the individuals apprehended in this sting and the cybercrime forum scene in general.

Adobe, MS, Oracle Push Critical Security Fixes

July 14, 2015

This being the second Tuesday of the month, it’s officially Patch Tuesday. But it’s not just Windows users who need to update today: Adobe has released fixes for several products, including a Flash Player bundle that patches two vulnerabilities for which exploit code is available online. Separately, Oracle issued a critical patch update that plugs more than two dozen security holes in Java.

Third Hacking Team Flash Zero-Day Found

July 13, 2015

For the third time in a week, researchers have discovered a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe’s Flash Player browser plugin. Like the previous two discoveries, this one came to light only after hackers dumped online huge troves of documents stolen from Hacking Team — an Italian security firm that sells software exploits to governments around the world.

Hacking Team Used Spammer Tricks to Resurrect Spy Network

July 13, 2015

Last week, hacktivists posted online 400 GB worth of internal emails, documents and other data stolen from Hacking Team, an Italian security firm that has earned the ire of privacy and civil liberties groups for selling spy software to governments worldwide. New analysis of the leaked Hacking Team emails suggests that in 2013 the company used techniques perfected by spammers to hijack Internet address space from a spammer-friendly Internet service provider in a bid to regain control over a spy network it apparently had set up for the Italian National Military Police.

Adobe To Fix Another Hacking Team Zero-Day

July 11, 2015

For the second time in a week, Adobe Systems Inc. says it plans fix a zero-day vulnerability in its Flash Player software that came to light after hackers broke into and posted online hundreds of gigabytes of data from Hacking Team, a controversial Italian company that’s long been accused of helping repressive regimes spy on dissident groups.