Tag Archives: BBC

Courts Hand Down Hard Jail Time for DDoS

January 14, 2019

Seldom do people responsible for launching crippling cyberattacks face justice, but increasingly courts around the world are making examples of the few who do get busted for such crimes. On Friday, a 34-year-old Connecticut man received a whopping 10-year prison sentence for carrying out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against a number of hospitals in 2014. Also last week, a 30-year-old in the United Kingdom was sentenced to 32 months in jail for using an army of hacked devices to crash large portions of Liberia’s Internet access in 2016.

For 2nd Time in 3 Years, Mobile Spyware Maker mSpy Leaks Millions of Sensitive Records

September 4, 2018

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mSpy, the makers of a software-as-a-service product that claims to help more than a million paying customers spy on the mobile devices of their kids and partners, has leaked millions of sensitive records online, including passwords, call logs, text messages, contacts, notes and location data secretly collected from phones running the stealthy spyware.

Less than a week ago, security researcher Nitish Shah directed KrebsOnSecurity to an open database on the Web that allowed anyone to query up-to-the-minute mSpy records for both customer transactions at mSpy’s site and for mobile phone data collected by mSpy’s software. The database required no authentication.

Did the Mirai Botnet Really Take Liberia Offline?

November 4, 2016

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KrebsOnSecurity received many a missive over the past 24 hours from readers who wanted to know why I’d not written about widespread media reports that Mirai — a malware strain made from hacked “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices such as poorly secured routers and IP cameras — was used to knock the entire country of Liberia offline. The trouble is, as far as I can tell no such nationwide outage actually occurred.

Ransomware Now Gunning for Your Web Sites

November 9, 2015

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One of the more common and destructive computer crimes to emerge over the past few years involves ransomware — malicious code that quietly scrambles all of the infected user’s documents and files with very strong encryption. A ransom, to be paid in Bitcon, is demanded in exchange for a key to unlock the files. Well, now it appears fraudsters are developing ransomware that does the same but for Web sites — essentially holding the site’s files, pages and images for ransom.

Another Lizard Arrested, Lizard Lair Hacked

January 16, 2015

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Several media outlets are reporting that authorities in the United Kingdom early this morning arrested an 18-year-old in connection with the denial-of-service attacks on Sony Playstation and Microsoft Xbox systems over Christmas. The arrest is one of several tied to a joint U.K. and U.S. law enforcement investigation into a group calling itself the “Lizard Squad,” and comes as the group’s attack-for-hire online service was completely compromised and leaked to investigators.

U.S. Government Seizes LibertyReserve.com

May 28, 2013

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U.S. federal law enforcement agencies on Tuesday announced the closure and seizure of Liberty Reserve, an online, virtual currency that the U.S. government alleges acted as “a financial hub of the cyber-crime world” and processed more more than $6 billion in criminal proceeds over the past seven years.