Security News
Tax-paying individuals in Mexico and Chile have been targeted by a Mexico-based cybercrime group that goes by the name Fenix to breach targeted networks and steal valuable data. "These fake websites prompt users to download a supposed security tool, claiming it will enhance their portal navigation safety," Metabase Q security researchers Gerardo Corona and Julio Vidal said in a recent analysis.
Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, the owner of the now-defunct BreachForums website, has pleaded guilty to charges related to his operation of the cybercrime forum as well as having child pornography images. The development, first reported by DataBreaches.net last week, comes nearly four months after Fitzpatrick was formally charged in the U.S. with conspiracy to commit access device fraud and possession of child pornography.
Sponsored Post Kroll's latest State of Incident Response: APAC report suggests that over half of all organizations in Asia Pacific have experienced a cyber incident, of which a third have suffered multiple incidents. Kroll's research indicates that 36 percent of the Asia Pacific organizations it surveyed appear not to have an incident response plan to mitigate and neutralize threats in place should incidents occur, which leaves them vulnerable to further attacks, predicts the company.
A suspected senior member of a French-speaking hacking crew known as OPERA1ER has been arrested as part of an international law enforcement operation codenamed Nervone, Interpol has announced. "The group is believed to have stolen an estimated USD 11 million - potentially as much as 30 million - in more than 30 attacks across 15 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America," the agency said.
Law enforcement has detained a suspect believed to be a key member of the OPERA1ER cybercrime group, which has targeted mobile banking services and financial institutions in malware, phishing, and Business Email Compromise campaigns. The suspect was arrested by authorities in Côte d'Ivoire in early June following a joint law enforcement action dubbed Operation Nervone with the help of AFRIPOL, Interpol's Cybercrime Directorate, cybersecurity company Group-IB, and telecom carrier Orange.
A threat actor known as Muddled Libra is targeting the business process outsourcing industry with persistent attacks that leverage advanced social engineering ploys to gain initial access. "The attack style defining Muddled Libra appeared on the cybersecurity radar in late 2022 with the release of the 0ktapus phishing kit, which offered a prebuilt hosting framework and bundled templates," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said in a technical report.
Researchers at Korean anti-malware business AhnLab are warning about an old-school attack that they say they're seeing a lot of these days, where cybercriminals guess their way into Linux shell servers and use them as jumping-off points for further attacks, often against innocent third parties. These attackers are using the not-very-secret and not-at-all-complicated trick of finding Linux shell servers that are accepting SSH connections over the internet, and then simply guessing at common username/password combinations in the hope that at least one user has a poorly-secured account.
Threat actors, ransomware gangs, malware developers, and others are increasingly and rapidly moving off of the "Traditional" dark web and onto illicit Telegram channels specializing in cybercrime. Level of technical proficiency to find cybercrime channels and successfully make purchases is even lower than Tor, creating a democratization of cybercrime data.
Earlier this year, threat researchers at Cybersixgill released the annual report, The State of the Cybercrime Underground. Further below, I also discuss the need for a new security approach, combining attack surface management and cyber threat intelligence to combat threat actors' ever-changing methods.
Operated out of Japan by French expatriate Mark Karpelès, Mt. Gox rapidly became the biggest online Bitcoin exchange, but imploded in 2014 when the company was forced to admit that it had lost Bitcoins worth more than $0.5 billion at the time. In 2014, the Big Daddy of Bitcoin exchanges, Japan-based Mt. Gox, made a "So sorry, they seem to have vanished" announcement about a whopping 650,000 Bitcoins, worth approximately $800 each at the time.