Security News
A Russian national pleaded guilty last week for his role in an international cyber theft ring that caused losses of more than $568 million. The man, Sergey Medvedev, also known as "Stells," "Segmed" and "Serjbear," 33, admitted to engaging in criminal activities as part of the Infraud Organization, an international cybercrime gang that operated between October 2010 and February 2018.
A well-connected Russian hacker once described as "An asset of supreme importance" to Moscow was sentenced on Friday to nine years in a U.S. prison after pleading guilty to running a site that sold stolen payment card data, and to administering a highly secretive crime forum that counted among its members some of the most elite Russian cybercrooks. Aleksei Burkov of St. Petersburg, Russia admitted to running CardPlanet, a site that sold more than 150,000 stolen credit card accounts, and to being a founder of DirectConnection - a closely guarded underground community that attracted some of the world's most-wanted Russian hackers.
A dramatic uptick in scams, counterfeiting, and hacking plague retail and e-commerce industries during the coronavirus crisis, as businesses try to define their new normal. The data from the report revealed that 41% of retail executives surveyed cited a dramatic shift in retail and e-commerce, and a higher rate of cybercrime against their brands since the beginning of the pandemic.
The findings come in a new paper released by researchers at Cambridge University's Cybercrime Centre, which examined the quality and types of work needed to build, maintain and defend illicit enterprises that make up a large portion of the cybercrime-as-a-service market. In examining these businesses, the academics stress that the romantic notions of those involved in cybercrime ignore the often mundane, rote aspects of the work that needs to be done to support online illicit economies.
The ad campaign follows a similar initiative launched in late 2017 that academics say measurably dampened demand for such services by explaining that their use to harm others is illegal and can land potential customers in jail. "The fact is, those standing in front of a classroom teaching children have less information about cybercrime than those they're trying to teach," Cox said, noting that the campaign is designed to support so-called "Knock-and-talk" visits, where investigators visit the homes of young people who've downloaded malware or purchased DDoS-for-hire services to warn them away from such activity.
Developed nations have higher incomes, technology, urbanization, and digitalization, which are all factors for greater cyber risk, says VPN provider NordVPN. Any person, organization, or country can be a victim of cybercrime, but some people and places are more susceptible than others. Looking at 50 different countries across the world, NordVPN found that people in developed nations are more likely to become victims of cybercrime.
At least eight US states and the federal government have lost millions of dollars due to cybercrime scams targeting unemployment benefits and funding from the CARES Act proceeds, according to the Secret Service and the cybersecurity company Agari. Cybercriminals with Scattered Canary have taken advantage of the situation according to Peterson, who wrote that the group filed more than 80 fraudulent claims for CARES Act Economic Impact Payments and even more claims for unemployment insurance in Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Washington, Wyoming and most recently Hawaii.
The term long tail first emerged in 2004, created by WIRED editor-in-chief Chris Anderson to describe "The new marketplace." His theory is that our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "Hits" at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. You determine how to aggregate the events in a way that provides enough meaning for analysis.
On April 4th, INTERPOL delivered a rare warning to hospitals around the world to be on high alert for imminent cyber-attacks. While hospitals struggle to keep pace with a global pandemic, the number of ransomware attacks targeting organizations critical to virus response has also increased.
Don Smith, the firm's senior director of cyber intelligence, told The Register: "The threat level is pretty much constant but the actors have significantly shifted their focus, their lures and their phishes to almost exclusive focus on COVID-19," adding: "But that's just the same lures and phishes that would have been coming out with a different subject matter four months ago." "Because of the global appeal of COVID-19 and the longevity of it, everyone's kind of converged on the same theme at the same time," he said.