Tag Archives: Federal Bureau of Investigation

Senator Chides FBI for Weak Advice on Mobile Security

June 30, 2025
27 Comments

Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) briefed Capitol Hill staff recently on hardening the security of their mobile devices, after a contacts list stolen from the personal phone of the White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was reportedly used to fuel a series of text messages and phone calls impersonating her to U.S. lawmakers. But in a letter this week to the FBI, one of the Senate’s most tech-savvy lawmakers says the feds aren’t doing enough to recommend more appropriate security protections that are already built into most consumer mobile devices.

New 0-Day Attacks Linked to China’s ‘Volt Typhoon’

August 27, 2024
12 Comments

Malicious hackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Versa Director, a software product used by many Internet and IT service providers. Researchers believe the activity is linked to Volt Typhoon, a Chinese cyber espionage group focused on infiltrating critical U.S. networks and laying the groundwork for the ability to disrupt communications between the United States and Asia during any future armed conflict with China.

U.S. Hacks QakBot, Quietly Removes Botnet Infections

August 29, 2023
22 Comments

The U.S. government today announced a coordinated crackdown against QakBot, a complex malware family used by multiple cybercrime groups to lay the groundwork for ransomware infections. The international law enforcement operation involved seizing control over the botnet’s online infrastructure, and quietly removing the Qakbot malware from tens of thousands of infected Microsoft Windows computer systems.

FBI Raids Chinese Point-of-Sale Giant PAX Technology

October 26, 2021
165 Comments

U.S. federal investigators today raided the U.S. offices of PAX Technology, a Chinese provider of point-of-sale devices used by millions of businesses and retailers globally. KrebsOnSecurity has learned the raid is tied to reports that PAX’s systems may have been involved in cyberattacks on U.S. and E.U. organizations.

Alleged vDOS Owners Poised to Stand Trial

March 27, 2017
67 Comments

Police in Israel are recommending that the state attorney’s office indict and prosecute two 18-year-olds suspected of operating vDOS, until recently the most popular attack service for knocking Web sites offline.

On Sept. 8, 2016, KrebsOnSecurity published a story about the hacking of vDOS, a service that attracted tens of thousands of paying customers and facilitated countless distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. That story named two young Israelis — Yarden Bidani and Itay Huri — as the likely owners and operators of vDOS, and within hours of its publication the two were arrested by Israeli police, placed on house arrest for 10 days, and forbidden from using the Internet for a month.