DoItQuick: Fast Domains for Dirty Deeds
A new service offered in the cybercriminal underground is geared toward spammers, scammers and malware purveyors interested in mass-registering dozens of dodgy domains in one go.
Author Archives: BrianKrebs
Top Spam Botnet, “Grum,” Unplugged
Roughly five years after it burst onto the malware scene, the notorious Grum spam botnet has been disconnected from the Internet. Grum has consistently been among the top three biggest sources of junk email, a crime machine capable of blasting 18 billion messages per day and responsible for sending about one-third of all spam.
Cyberheist Smokescreen: Email, Phone, SMS Floods
It was early October 2011, and I was on the treadmill checking email when I noticed several hundred new messages had arrived since I last looked at my Gmail inbox just 20 minutes earlier. I didn’t know it at the time, but my account was being used to beta test a private service now offered openly in the criminal underground that can be hired to create highly disruptive floods of junk email, text messages and phone calls.
Many businesses request some kind of confirmation from their bank whenever high-dollar transfers are initiated. These confirmations may be sent via text message or email, or the business may ask their bank to call them to verify requested transfers. The attack that hit my inbox was part of an offering that crooks can hire to flood each medium of communication, thereby preventing a targeted business from ever receiving or finding alerts from their bank.
Spammers Target Dropbox Users
“Always have your stuff when you need it with Dropbox.” That’s the marketing line for the online file storage service, but today users have had difficulty logging into the service. The outages came amid reports that many European Dropbox users were being blasted with spam for online casinos, suggesting some kind of leak of Dropbox user email addresses.
How to Break Into Security, Bejtlich Edition
For this fourth installment of advice columns aimed at people who are interested in learning more about security as a craft or profession, I reached out to Richard Bejtlich, a prominent security blogger who last year moved from a job… Read More »
Spy Software Aims to Corral Money Mules
Borrowing from the playbook of corporations seeking better ways to track employee productivity, some cybercriminal gangs are investing in technologies that help them keep closer tabs on their most prized assets: “Money mules,” individuals willingly or unwittingly recruited to help… Read More »
Banking on a Live CD
An investigative series I’ve been writing over the past three years about organized cyber crime gangs using malware to steal millions of dollars from small to mid-sized organizations has generated more than a few responses from business owners concerned about… Read More »
EU to Banks: Assume All PCs Are Infected
An agency of the European Union created to improve network and data security is offering some blunt, timely and refreshing advice for financial institutions as they try to secure the online banking channel: “Assume all PCs are infected.”
The unusually frank perspective comes from the European Network and Information Security Agency, in response to a recent “High Roller” report (PDF) by McAfee and Guardian Analytics on sophisticated, automated malicious software strains that are increasingly targeting high-balance bank accounts. The report detailed how thieves using custom versions of the ZeuS and SpyEye Trojans have built automated, cloud-based systems capable of defeating multiple layers of security, including hardware tokens, one-time transaction codes, even smartcard readers. These malware variants can be set up to automatically initiate transfers to vetted money mule or prepaid accounts, just as soon as the victim logs in to his account.
Microsoft Patches Zero-Day Bug & 15 Other Flaws
Microsoft today issued a security patch to fix a zero-day vulnerability in Windows that hackers have been exploiting to break into vulnerable systems. The company also addressed at least 15 other flaws in its software, and urged customers to quit using the desktop Sidebar and Gadget capabilities offered in Windows 7 and Windows Vista.
Plesk 0Day For Sale As Thousands of Sites Hacked
Hackers in the criminal underground are selling an exploit that extracts the master password needed to control Parallels’ Plesk Panel, a software suite used to remotely administer hosted servers at a large number of Internet hosting firms. The attack comes amid reports from multiple sources indicating a spike in Web site compromises that appear to trace back to Plesk installations.
