You can’t make this stuff up: A tech support company based in the United States that outsources its work to India says its brand is being unfairly maligned by — wait for it…..tech support scammers based in India. In an added twist, the U.S.-based tech support firm claims that the trouble is related to its admittedly false statements about being a Microsoft Certified Partner — a common claim among telephone-based tech support scams.
Spammers have been working methodically to hijack large chunks of Internet real estate by exploiting a technical and bureaucratic loophole in the way that various regions of the globe keep track of the world’s Internet address ranges.
Adobe and Microsoft today each issued security updates to fix critical vulnerabilities in their software. Microsoft pushed 14 patches to address problems in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer at .NET, among other products. Separately, Adobe issued an update for its Flash Player software that corrects at least 18 security issues.
As if the credit card breach at Home Depot didn’t already look enough like the Target breach: Home Depot said yesterday that the hackers who stole 56 million customer credit and debit card accounts also made off with 53 million customer email addresses.
Federal prosecutors in New York today announced the arrest and charging of a San Francisco man they say ran the online drug bazaar and black market known as Silk Road 2.0. In conjunction with the arrest, U.S. and European authorities have jointly seized control over the servers that hosted Silk Road 2.0 marketplace.
A long trail of spam, dodgy domains and hijacked Internet addresses leads back to a 37-year-old junk email purveyor in San Diego who was the first alleged spammer to have been criminally prosecuted 13 years ago for blasting unsolicited commercial email.
A number of readers have complained recently about having their Hilton Honors loyalty accounts emptied by cybercrooks. This type of fraud often catches consumers off-guard, but the truth is that the recent spike against Hilton Honors members is part of a larger fraud trend that’s been worsening for years as more companies offer rewards programs.
Many companies give customers the ability to earn “loyalty” or “award” points and miles that can be used to book travel, buy goods and services online, or redeemed for cash. Unfortunately, the online accounts used to manage these reward programs tend to be less secured by both consumers and the companies that operate them, and increasingly cyber thieves are swooping in to take advantage.
The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners today announced they have selected Yours Truly as the recipient of this year’s “Guardian Award,” an honor given annually to a journalist “whose determination, perseverance, and commitment to the truth have contributed significantly to the fight against fraud.”
The Obama administration recently issued an executive order requiring that federal agencies migrate to more secure chip-and-PIN based credit cards for all federal employees that are issued payment cards. The move marks a departure from the far more prevalent “chip-and-signature” standard, an approach that has been overwhelmingly adopted by a majority of U.S. banks that are currently issuing chip-based cards. This post seeks to explore some of the possible reasons for the disparity.
In an era when new consumer data breaches are disclosed daily, fake claims about data leaks are sadly becoming more common. These claims typically come from fame-seeking youngsters who enjoy trolling journalists and corporations, and otherwise wasting everyone’s time. Fortunately, a new analysis of recent bogus breach claims provides some simple tools that anyone can use to quickly identify fake data leak claims.
