Information

Child identity theft: how do I keep my kids’ personal data safe?

Why is kids’ personal information in high demand, how do criminals steal it, and what can parents do to help prevent child identity theft? Total identity fraud losses in the US were estimated at a whopping $43bn last year. While many of us are getting savvier about how we protect our personal information online, can we say the same about our children’s data? Child identity theft is more common than you might think. Almost a…

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Google Virus Total leaks list of spooky email addresses

by Paul Ducklin Early disclaimer: this isn’t quite the mother of all data breaches, nor even perhaps a younger cousin, so you can stand down from Blue Alert right away. As far as we can tell, only names, email addresses and employers were leaked in the wrongly shared document. But what names they were! The leaked list apparently made up a handy email Who’s Who list of global cybersecurity experts from intelligence agencies, law enforcement…

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Microsoft hit by Storm season – a tale of two semi-zero days

by Paul Ducklin At the tail-end of last week, Microsoft published a report entitled Analysis of Storm-0558 techniques for unauthorized email access. In this rather dramatic document, the company’s security team revealed the background to a previously unexplained hack in which data including email text, attachments and more were accessed: from approximately 25 organizations, including government agencies and related consumer accounts in the public cloud. The bad news, even though only 25 organisations were apparently…

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Recycling Giant Tomra Takes Systems Offline Following Cyberattack

Norwegian recycling giant Tomra has taken some of its systems offline after falling victim to what it describes as “an extensive cyberattack”. A multinational company, Tomra manufactures waste collection and sorting products, including reverse vending machines and food sorters. The company operates close to 100,000 recycling systems worldwide. On Monday, Tomra announced that some of its data systems were impacted by a cyberattack that was discovered on July 16, and that it immediately disconnected some…

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LeakedSource Owner Quit Ashley Madison a Month Before 2015 Hack

[This is Part III in a series on research conducted for a recent Hulu documentary on the 2015 hack of marital infidelity website AshleyMadison.com.] In 2019, a Canadian company called Defiant Tech Inc. pleaded guilty to running LeakedSource[.]com, a service that sold access to billions of passwords and other data exposed in countless data breaches. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that the owner of Defiant Tech, a 32-year-old Ontario man named Jordan Evan Bloom, was hired in…

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Nigerian Man Sentenced to 8 Years in US Prison for $8 Million BEC Scheme

A Nigerian national who had been living in the United Arab Emirates has been sentenced to more than eight years in a US prison for his role in an $8 million cybercrime scheme. The man, 31-year-old Olalekan Jacob Ponle, aka Mark Kain and Mr Woodbery, was involved in a business email compromise (BEC) scheme for at least nine months in 2019, while he was living in the UAE. He was arrested in the UAE in…

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Owner of Cybercrime Website BreachForums Pleads Guilty

The owner of the infamous cybercrime website BreachForums has pleaded guilty in a US court to conspiracy to commit device fraud, access device fraud, and possession of child pornography. The man, Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, 21, of Peekskill, New York, was arrested on March 15, 2023, being charged with conspiracy to commit access device fraud. Fitzpatrick, who was known online as ‘Pompompurin’, has admitted to investigators that he was the owner and administrator of the BreachForums…

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Key findings from ESET Threat Report H1 2023 – Week in security with Tony Anscombe

Here’s how cybercriminals have adjusted their tactics in response to Microsoft’s stricter security policies and other interesting findings from ESET’s new Threat Report This week, the ESET research team released the H1 2023 ESET Threat Report that examines the key trends and developments that shaped the cybersecurity landscape from December 2022 to May 2023. Among other things, the report shows the remarkable ability of cybercriminals to pivot to new tactics and techniques in an effort…

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Zimbra Collaboration Suite warning: Patch this 0-day right now (by hand)!

by Paul Ducklin Popular collaboration product Zimbra has warned customers to apply a software patch urgently to close a security hole that it says “could potentially impact the confidentiality and integrity of your data.” The vulnerability is what’s known as an XSS bug, short for cross-site scripting, whereby performing an innocent-looking operation via site X, such as clicking through to site Y, gives the operator of site X a sneaky chance to implant rogue JavaScript…

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S3 Ep143: Supercookie surveillance shenanigans

by Paul Ducklin SING A SONG OF SUPERCOOKIES Remembering the slide rule. What you need to know about Patch Tuesday. Supercookie surveillance shenanigans. When bugs arrive in pairs. Apple’s rapid patch that needed a rapid patch. User-Agent considered harmful. No audio player below? Listen directly on Soundcloud. With Doug Aamoth and Paul Ducklin. Intro and outro music by Edith Mudge. You can listen to us on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere that…

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