Tag Archives: fbi

The Long Tail of ColdFusion Fail

March 17, 2014

Earlier this month, I published a story about a criminal hacking gang using Adobe ColdFusion vulnerabilities to build a botnet of hacked e-commerce sites that were milked for customer credit card data. Today’s post examines the impact that this botnet has had on several businesses, as well as the important and costly lessons these companies learned from the intrusions.

New Clues in the Target Breach

January 29, 2014

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.

Data Broker Hackers Also Compromised NW3C

October 1, 2013

The same miscreants responsible for breaking into the networks of America’s top consumer and business data brokers appear to have also infiltrated and stolen huge amounts of data from the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), a congressionally-funded non-profit organization that provides training, investigative support and research to agencies and entities involved in the prevention, investigation and prosecution of cybercrime.

Data Broker Giants Hacked by ID Theft Service

September 25, 2013

An identity theft service that sells Social Security numbers, birth records, credit and background reports on millions of Americans has infiltrated computers at some of America’s largest consumer and business data aggregators, according to a seven-month investigation by KrebsOnSecurity.

Spy Service Exposes Nigerian ‘Yahoo Boys’

September 9, 2013

A crude but effective online service that lets users deploy keystroke logging malware and then view the stolen data remotely was hacked recently. The information leaked from that service has revealed a network of several thousand Nigerian email scammers and offers a fascinating glimpse into an entire underground economy that is seldom explored.

$1.5 million Cyberheist Ruins Escrow Firm

August 7, 2013

A $1.5 million cyberheist against a California escrow firm earlier this year has forced the company to close and lay off its entire staff. Meanwhile, the firm’s remaining money is in the hands of a court-appointed state receiver, which is considering a lawsuit against the victim’s bank to recover the stolen funds.

Cashout Service for Ransomware Scammers

June 3, 2013

There are 1,001 ways to swindle people online, but the hardest part for crooks is converting those ill-gotten gains into cash. A new service catering to purveyors of ransomware — malware that hijacks PCs until victims pay a ransom – levees a hefty fee for laundering funds from these scams, and it does so by abusing a legitimate Web site that allows betting on dog and horse races in the United States.

U.S. Government Seizes LibertyReserve.com

May 28, 2013

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.

Ragebooter: ‘Legit’ DDoS Service, or Fed Backdoor?

May 16, 2013

On Monday, I profiled asylumbooter.com, one of several increasingly public DDoS-for-hire services posing as Web site “stress testing” services. Today, we’ll look at ragebooter.net, yet another attack service except for one secret feature which sets it apart from the competition: According the site’s proprietor, ragebooter.net includes a hidden backdoor that lets the FBI monitor customer activity.

Alleged SpyEye Seller ‘Bx1’ Extradited to U.S.

May 3, 2013

A 24-year-old Algerian man arrested in Thailand earlier this year on suspicion of co-developing and selling the infamous SpyEye banking trojan was extradited this week to the United States, where he faces criminal charges for allegedly hijacking bank accounts at more than 200 financial institutions.