Security News
This week's motion is: Hacking is not a crime, and the media should stop using 'hacker' as a pejorative. Now, arguing FOR the motion is ALYSSA MILLER.... Using the term "Hacker" to describe cyber criminals is an unfortunate habit that plagues modern media.
Given the danger that arises as soon as the crooks sneak into your network, it's as important to learn how malware gets delivered in the first place as it is to know what happens to your files when ransomware finally scrambles them. The Gootkit malware family has been around more than half a decade - a mature Trojan with functionality centered around banking credential theft.
"The attacks orchestrated by this criminal gang targeted thousands of victims throughout 2020, including famous internet influencers, sport stars, musicians and their families," according to an alert from the organization. In a typical SIM-swapping attack, attackers use stolen, sleuthed or phished personal information - including, crucially, a person's mobile phone number - to impersonate a target.
The Online Impersonation Prohibition up for debate this week in the Utah House of Representatives, "Makes it a criminal offense, under certain circumstances, to impersonate an individual online with the intent to harm, defraud, intimidate, or threaten any individual," according to the current draft of the legislation. The legislation, officially known as House Bill 239 and sponsored by Utah Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, is part of a larger submission, HB 80, which seeks to amend privacy laws to create an "Affirmative defense" for companies in lawsuits over data breaches, according to a report posted online by Fox 13 in Salt Lake City.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions published survey results of U.S. and Canadian compliance professionals on the range of challenges that financial institutions have experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey outlines the issues that many financial institutions encounter today and finds that the pandemic continues to test the resilience and agility of businesses across every market.
Financial cybercrime in 2021 is set to evolve, researchers say, with extortion practices becoming more widespread, ransomware gangs consolidating and advanced exploits being used more effectively to target victims. According to Kasperky, ransomware - above all - will continue to be a main scourge in the year ahead. "Due to their successful operations and extensive media coverage this year, the threat actors behind targeted ransomware systematically increased the amounts victims were expected to pay in exchange for not publishing stolen information," researchers said in a Monday posting.
Britain's National Crime Agency arrested six men in London on suspicion of laundering "Tens of millions" for the Trickbot and Dridex banking malware gangs, the not-quite-police agency declared today. The six, a mixture of British and Eastern European citizens, were arrested around a year ago, said the NCA as EU police agency Europol jointly boasted of a further 14 arrests in the political bloc, the US and Australia.
Jumio announced that the company acquired the AML platform from Beam Solutions, a San Francisco-based startup focused on transaction monitoring and KYC. Jumio will integrate Beam's suite of AML solutions into its current KYX Platform to further strengthen the company's position in the anti-financial crime marketplace. Beam's mission is to make the financial system safer by applying creative technological innovation to the detection and reporting of suspicious financial activity that facilitates money laundering, terrorism and human trafficking.
As Uber's chief security officer, Joe Sullivan broke the law by hushing up the theft of millions of people's details from the app maker's databases by hackers, prosecutors say. According to the government, the charges [PDF] stem from Sullivan's efforts to cover up the 2016 security breach at Uber in which miscreants siphoned from internal databases the personal information of 57 million passengers and 600,000 drivers, including their driving license details.
NICE Actimize announced the launch of its newest platform, NICE Actimize Xceed, which integrates best-in-class AI, data intelligence, behavioral analytics, and insights within a unified cloud platform designed to bring agility to financial institutions of all sizes, including community and regional banks, that are looking to modernize their financial crime risk management solutions. With "Always On" AI-based technology, NICE Actimize Xceed's self-learning capabilities immediately and autonomously adapt to new threats, helping financial institutions meet today's dynamic risk management needs with laser accuracy, speed and simplicity, and without the need for a team of data scientists.