Tag Archives: Lending Tree

Canadian Man Arrested in Snowflake Data Extortions

November 5, 2024
22 Comments

A 26-year-old man in Ontario, Canada has been arrested for allegedly stealing data from and extorting more than 160 companies that used the cloud data service Snowflake.

On October 30, Canadian authorities arrested Alexander Moucka, a.k.a. Connor Riley Moucka of Kitchener, Ontario, on a provisional arrest warrant from the United States. Bloomberg first reported Moucka’s alleged ties to the Snowflake hacks on Monday.

At the end of 2023, malicious hackers learned that many large companies had uploaded huge volumes of sensitive customer data to Snowflake accounts that were protected with little more than a username and password (no multi-factor authentication required). After scouring darknet markets for stolen Snowflake account credentials, the hackers began raiding the data storage repositories used by some of the world’s largest corporations.

The Dark Nexus Between Harm Groups and ‘The Com’

September 13, 2024
38 Comments

A cyberattack that shut down some of the top casinos in Las Vegas last year quickly became one of the most riveting security stories of 2023: It was the first known case of native English-speaking hackers in the United States and Britain teaming up with ransomware gangs based in Russia. But that made-for-Hollywood narrative has eclipsed a far more hideous trend: Many of these young, Western cybercriminals are also members of fast-growing online groups that exist solely to bully, stalk, harass and extort vulnerable teens into physically harming themselves and others.