Last month, KrebsOnSecurity tracked the sudden emergence of hundreds of polished online gaming and wagering websites that lure people with free credits and eventually abscond with any cryptocurrency funds deposited by players. We’ve since learned that these scam gambling sites have proliferated thanks to a new Russian affiliate program called “Gambler Panel” that bills itself as a “soulless project that is made for profit.”
The cybersecurity community on Reddit responded in disbelief this month when a self-described Air National Guard member with top secret security clearance began questioning the arrangement they’d made with company called DSLRoot, which was paying $250 a month to plug a pair of laptops into the Redditor’s high-speed Internet connection in the United States. This post examines the history and provenance of DSLRoot, one of the oldest “residential proxy” networks with origins in Russia and Eastern Europe.
A 22-year-old Oregon man has been arrested on suspicion of operating “Rapper Bot,” a massive botnet used to power a service for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against targets — including a March 2025 DDoS that knocked Twitter/X offline. The Justice Department asserts the suspect and an unidentified co-conspirator rented out the botnet to online extortionists, and tried to stay off the radar of law enforcement by ensuring that their botnet was never pointed at KrebsOnSecurity.
Cybercriminal groups peddling sophisticated phishing kits that convert stolen card data into mobile wallets have recently shifted their focus to targeting customers of brokerage services, new research shows. Undeterred by security controls at these trading platforms that block users from wiring funds directly out of accounts, the phishers have pivoted to using multiple compromised brokerage accounts in unison to manipulate the prices of foreign stocks.
A new documentary series about cybercrime airing next month on HBO Max features interviews with Yours Truly. The four-part series follows the exploits of Julius Kivimäki, a prolific Finnish hacker recently convicted of leaking tens of thousands of patient records from an online psychotherapy practice while attempting to extort the clinic and its patients.
Fraudsters are flooding Discord and other social media platforms with ads for hundreds of polished online gaming and wagering websites that lure people with free credits and eventually abscond with any cryptocurrency funds deposited by players. Here’s a closer look at the social engineering tactics and remarkable traits of this sprawling network of more than 1,200 scam sites.
KrebsOnSecurity recently heard from a reader whose boss’s email account got phished and was used to trick one of the company’s customers into sending a large payment to scammers. An investigation into the attacker’s infrastructure points to a long-running Nigerian cybercrime group that is actively targeting established companies in the transportation and aviation industries.
Security researchers recently revealed that the personal information of millions of people who applied for jobs at McDonald’s was exposed after they guessed the password (“123456”) for the fast food chain’s account at Paradox.ai, a company that makes artificial intelligence based hiring chatbots used by many Fortune 500 companies. Paradox.ai said the security oversight was an isolated incident that did not affect its other customers, but recent security breaches involving its employees in Vietnam tell a more nuanced story.
Marko Elez, a 25-year-old employee at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has been granted access to sensitive databases at the U.S. Social Security Administration, the Treasury and Justice departments, and the Department of Homeland Security. So it should fill all Americans with a deep sense of confidence to learn that Mr. Elez over the weekend inadvertently published a private key that allowed anyone to interact directly with more than four dozen large language models (LLMs) developed by Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI.
In May 2025, the U.S. government sanctioned a Chinese national for operating a cloud provider linked to the majority of virtual currency investment scam websites reported to the FBI. But more than a month later, the accused continues to openly operate accounts at a slew of American tech companies, including Facebook, Github, LinkedIn, PayPal and Twitter/X.
