Category Archives: A Little Sunshine

Includes investigative blog posts meant to shine a light on the darker corners of the Internet.

Russian e-Payment Giant ChronoPay Hacked

December 29, 2010
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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.

The Cyberwar Will Not Be Streamed

December 20, 2010
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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.

Russian Police Only Translate the Good News

December 16, 2010
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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?

December 15, 2010
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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.

Reintroducing Scanlab (a.k.a Scamlab)

December 7, 2010
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Many sites and services require customers to present “proof” of their identity online by presenting scanned copies of important documents, such as passports, utility bills, or diplomas. But these requests don’t really prove anything, as there are a number of online services that will happily forge these documents quite convincingly for a small fee.

Shopping Online? Know Thy Seller

November 29, 2010
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This time of year, it seems like everyone has a guide on how to shop safely online. Most of these tip sheets focus on ways to spot insecure Web sites and harden your computer against data-stealing malware, but it’s equally important to research the reputation of the merchant before it’s too late.