In Dec. 2015, KrebsOnSecurity warned that security experts had discovered skimming devices attached to credit and debit card terminals at self-checkout lanes at Safeway stores in Colorado and possibly other states. Safeway hasn’t disclosed what those skimmers looked like, but images from a recent skimming attack allegedly launched against self-checkout shoppers at a Safeway in Maryland offers a closer look at once such device.
Norse Corp., a Foster City, Calif. based cybersecurity firm that has attracted much attention from the news media and investors alike this past year, fired its chief executive officer this week amid a major shakeup that could spell the end of the company. The move comes just weeks after the company laid off almost 30 percent of its staff.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today said it tracked a nearly 50 percent increase in identity theft complaints in 2015, and that by far the biggest contributor to that spike was tax refund fraud. The announcement coincided with the debut of a beefed up FTC Web site aimed at making it easier for consumers to report and recover from all forms of ID theft.
Ne’er-do-wells have long abused a feature in Skype to glean the Internet address of other users. Indeed, many shady online services that can be hired to launch attacks aimed at knocking users offline bundle so-called “Skype resolvers” that let customers find a target’s last known location online. At long last, Microsoft says its latest version of Skype will hide user Internet addresses by default.
A Ukrainian man who tried to frame me for heroin possession has pleaded guilty to multiple cybercrime charges in U.S. federal court, including credit card theft and hacking into more than 13,000 computers.
A story in a national news source earlier this month about freezing your child’s credit file to preempt ID thieves prompted many readers to erroneously conclude that all states allow this as of 2016. The truth is that some states let parents create a file for their child and then freeze it, while many states have no laws on the matter. Here’s a short primer on the current situation, with the availability of credit freezes (a.k.a “security freeze”) for minors by state and by credit bureau.
If you stayed, ate or played at a Hyatt hotel between Aug. 13 and Dec. 8, 2015, there’s a good chance your credit or debit card data was stolen by unknown cyber thieves who infiltrated many of the hotel chain’s payment systems. Its its first disclosure about the scope of a breach acknowledged last month, Hyatt Hotels Corp. says the intrusion likely affected guests at 250 hotels in roughly 50 countries.
Ransomware — malicious software that encrypts the victim’s files and holds them hostage unless and until the victim pays a ransom in Bitcoin — has emerged as a potent and increasingly common threat online. But many Internet users are unaware that ransomware also can just as easily seize control over files stored on cloud services.
My PayPal account was hacked on Christmas Eve. The perpetrator tried to further stir up trouble by sending my PayPal funds to a hacker gang that recruits for the terrorist group ISIS. Although the intruder failed to siphon any funds, the successful takeover of the account speaks volumes about why most organizations — including many financial institutions — remain woefully behind the times in authenticating their customers and staying ahead of identity thieves.
Expect phishers and other password thieves to up their game in 2016: Both Google and Yahoo! are taking steps to kill off the password as we know it.
New authentication methods now offered by Yahoo! and to a beta group of Google users let customers log in just by supplying their email address, and then responding to a notification sent to their mobile device.
