Security News
Security researchers analyzing the activity of the recently emerged 3AM ransomware operation uncovered close connections with infamous groups, such as the Conti syndicate and the Royal ransomware gang. The 3AM ransomware gang's activity was first documented publicly in mid-September when the Threat Hunter Team at Symantec, now part of Broadcom, revealed that they noticed threat actors switching to ThreeAM ransomware after failing to deploy the LockBit malware.
Security researchers have pinned a DDoS botnet that's infected potentially millions of smart TVs and set-top boxes to an eight-year-old cybercrime syndicate called Bigpanzi. "The potential for Bigpanzi-controlled TVs and STBs to broadcast violent, terroristic, or pornographic content, or to employ increasingly convincing AI-generated videos for political propaganda, poses a significant threat to social order and stability," said researchers at Chinese security biz Qianxin.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced the end of a transnational investigation into the dark web xDedic cybercrime marketplace, charging 19 suspects for their involvement in running and using the market's services. Law enforcement estimated at the time of its takedown that fraudulent activities facilitated through the xDedic cybercrime market totaled more than $68 million.
In 2023, we saw numerous law enforcement operations targeting cybercrime operations, including cryptocurrency scams, phishing attacks, credential theft, malware development, and ransomware attacks. While some of these operations were more successful than others, law enforcement has been increasingly using hack-back tactics to infiltrate operations and disrupt them.
The Federal Criminal Police Office in Germany and the internet-crime combating unit of Frankfurt have announced the seizure of Kingdom Market, a dark web marketplace for drugs, cybercrime tools, and fake government IDs. The law enforcement operation also included authorities from the United States, Switzerland, Moldova, and Ukraine, while one of the administrators has been arrested in the US. Kingdom Market was an English-speaking marketplace on the dark web with international reach that has operated since March 2021.
Security teams then use more AI in response to the AI-driven threats, and threat actors augment their AI to keep up, and the cycle continues. There are trust issues with AI security solutions, and the data models used to develop AI-powered security products appear to be perennially at risk.
Microsoft disrupted an alleged threat actor group that built viable cybercrime-as-a-service businesses. Dubbed Storm-1152 by Microsoft, the group bilked enterprises and consumers globally out of millions of dollars.
Microsoft on Wednesday said it obtained a court order to seize infrastructure set up by a group called Storm-1152 that peddled roughly 750 million fraudulent Microsoft accounts and tools through a...
Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit seized multiple domains used by a Vietnam-based cybercrime group that registered over 750 million fraudulent accounts and raked in millions of dollars by selling them online to other cybercriminals. Storm-1152 is a major cybercrime-as-a-service provider and the number one seller of fraudulent Outlook accounts, as well as other illegal "Products," including an automatic CAPTCHA-solving service to bypass Microsoft's CAPTCHA challenges and register more fraudulent Microsoft email accounts.
A new cybercrime marketplace, OLVX, has emerged and is quickly gaining new customers looking to purchase tools to conduct online fraud and cyberattacks. OLVX follows a recent trend where cybercrime marketplaces are increasingly hosted on the clearnet instead of the dark web, making them more accessible to a broader range of users and possible to promote through search engine optimization.