Category Archives: The Coming Storm

This category includes blog posts about computer and Internet security threats now and on the horizon.

Fire Sale on Cards Stolen in Target Breach

February 19, 2014
47 Comments

Last year’s breach at Target Corp. flooded underground markets with millions of stolen credit and debit cards. In the days surrounding the breach disclosure, the cards carried unusually high price tags — in large part because few banks had gotten around to canceling any of them yet. Today, two months after the breach, the number of unsold stolen cards that haven’t been cancelled by issuing banks is rapidly shrinking, forcing the miscreants behind this historic heist to unload huge volumes of cards onto underground markets and at cut-rate prices.

The New Normal: 200-400 Gbps DDoS Attacks

February 14, 2014
68 Comments

KrebsOnSecurity has been targeted by countless denial-of-service attacks intended to knock it offline. Earlier this week, KrebsOnSecurity was hit by easily the most massive and intense such attack yet — a nearly 200 Gpbs assault leverging a simple attack method that industry experts is becoming alarmingly common.

Florida Targets High-Dollar Bitcoin Exchangers

February 7, 2014
131 Comments

State authorities in Florida on Thursday announced criminal charges targeting three men who allegedly ran illegal businesses moving large amounts of cash in and out of the Bitcoin virtual currency. Experts say this is the first case in which Bitcoin vendors have been prosecuted under state anti-money laundering laws, and that prosecutions like these could smother one of the last remaining avenues for purchasing Bitcoins anonymously.

These Guys Battled BlackPOS at a Retailer

February 4, 2014
149 Comments

Ever since news broke that thieves stole more than 40 million debit and credit card accounts from Target using a strain of Point-Of-Sale malware known as BlackPOS, much speculation has swirled around unanswered questions, such as how this malware was introduced into the network, and what mechanisms were used to infect thousands of Target’s cash registers.

New Clues in the Target Breach

January 29, 2014
132 Comments

An examination of the malware used in the Target breach suggests that the attackers may have taken advantage of a poorly secured feature built into a widely-used IT management software product that was running on the retailer’s internal network.

A Closer Look at the Target Malware, Part II

January 16, 2014
145 Comments

Yesterday’s story about the point-of-sale malware used in the Target attack has prompted a flood of reporting from antivirus and security vendors. Buried within those reports are some interesting details that speak to possible actors involved and to the timing and discovery of this breach.

The Case for a Compulsory Bug Bounty

December 17, 2013
66 Comments

Security experts have long opined that one way to make software more secure is to hold software makers liable for vulnerabilities in their products. This idea is often dismissed as unrealistic and one that would stifle innovation in an industry that has been a major driver of commercial growth and productivity over the years. But a new study released this week presents perhaps the clearest economic case yet for compelling companies to pay for information about security vulnerabilities in their products.

Help Bring Privacy Laws Into 21st Century

December 11, 2013
35 Comments

Lost in the ongoing media firestorm over the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance activities is the discussion about concrete steps to bring the nation’s communications privacy laws into the 21st Century. Under current laws that were drafted before the advent of the commercial Internet, federal and local authorities can gain access to mobile phone and many email records without a court-issued warrant. In this post, I’ll explain what federal lawmakers and readers can do to help change the status quo.

How Many Zero-Days Hit You Today?

December 5, 2013
52 Comments

On any given day, nation-states and criminal hackers have access to an entire arsenal of zero-day vulnerabilities — undocumented and unpatched software flaws that can be used to silently slip past most organizations’ cyber defenses, new research suggests. That sobering conclusion comes amid mounting evidence that thieves and cyberspies are ramping up spending to acquire and stockpile these digital armaments.