Microsoft Warns of Image Problem
Microsoft today warned Windows users about a previously unknown security vulnerability that could allow attackers to install malware simply by getting users to view a malicious image in a Web browser or document.
Author Archives: BrianKrebs
‘White House’ eCard Dupes Dot-Gov Geeks
A malware-laced e-mail that spoofed seasons greetings from The White House siphoned gigabytes of sensitive documents from dozens of victims over the holidays, including a number of government employees and contractors who work on cybersecurity matters, KrebsOnSecurity.com has learned.
The attack appears to be the latest salvo from ZeuS malware gangs whose activities over the past year have blurred the boundaries between online financial crime and espionage, by stealing financial data and documents from victim machines. This activity is unusual because most criminals using ZeuS are interested in money-making activities – such as stealing banking passwords and creating botnets – whereas the hoovering up of sensitive government documents is typically associated with threats from China that are deployed to gather industrial or military intelligence.
Russian e-Payment Giant ChronoPay Hacked
Criminals this week hijacked ChronoPay.com, the domain name for Russia’s largest online payment processor, redirecting hundreds of unsuspecting visitors to a fake ChronoPay page that stole customer financial data.
ChronoPay chief executive Pavel Vrublevsky said the bogus payment page was up for several hours on Christmas day, during which time the attackers collected roughly 800 credit card numbers from customers visiting the site to make payments for various services that rely on ChronoPay for processing.
Happy Birthday KrebsOnSecurity.com
It’s hard to believe that a year has passed since I posted the first entry on this blog. It seems like just yesterday that I was leaving The Washington Post and making a huge – and somewhat scary – leap… Read More »
Carders.cc, Backtrack-linux.org and Exploit-db.org Hacked
Carders.cc, a German security forum that specializes in trading stolen credit cards and other purloined data, has been hacked by security vigilantes for the second time this year. Also waking up to “you’ve been owned” calling cards this Christmas are… Read More »
Exploit Published for New Internet Explorer Flaw
Hackers have released exploit code that can be used to compromise Windows PCs through a previously unknown security flaw present in all versions Internet Explorer, Microsoft warned today.
Dave Forstrom, director of trustworthy computing at Microsoft, said the software giant is not aware of any attacks via this flaw attack customers, “given the public disclosure of this vulnerability, the likelihood of criminals using this information to actively attack our customers may increase.”
The Cyberwar Will Not Be Streamed
In early 2000 — ages ago in Internet time — some of the biggest names in e-commerce were brought to their knees by a brief but massive assault from a set of powerful computers hijacked by a glory-seeking young hacker. The assailant in that case, known online as Mafiaboy, was a high school student from a middle-class suburban area of Canada who was quickly arrested after bragging about his role in the attacks.
It wasn’t long before the antics from novice hackers like Mafiaboy were overshadowed by more discrete attacks from organized cyber criminal gangs, which began using these distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults to extort money from targeted businesses. Fast-forward to today, and although vanity DDoS attacks persist, somehow elements in the news media have begun conflating them with the term “cyberwar,” a vogue but still-squishy phrase that conjures notions of far more consequential, nation-state level conflicts.
Google Debuts “This Site May Be Compromised” Warning
Google has added a new security and anti-spam feature to its search engine that promises to increase the number of Web page results that are flagged as potentially having been compromised by hackers.
Russian Police Only Translate the Good News
Internet security and cybercrime experts often complain that Russian law enforcement agencies don’t place a high priority on investigating and arresting hackers in that country. While that criticism may be fair, it may also be that Russian bureaucrats simply do not wish to call any attention to any sort of crime in their country — at least not to Westerners’ view.
Fallout from Recent Spear Phishing Attacks?
McDonald’s and Walgreens this week revealed that data breaches at partner marketing firms had exposed customer information. There has been a great deal of media coverage treating these and other similar cases as isolated incidents, but all signs indicate they are directly tied to a spate of “spear phishing” attacks against e-mail marketing firms that have siphoned customer data from more than 100 companies in the past few months.
