Security News
The National Police of Ukraine took down a network of call centers used by a cybercrime group focused on financial scams and targeting victims of cryptocurrency scams under the guise of helping them recover their stolen funds. The fraudsters behind these illegal call centers were also allegedly involved in scamming citizens of Ukraine and European Union countries interested in cryptocurrency, securities, gold, and oil investments.
A consumer's online account where they login and input their passwords is a very lucrative target for cybercriminals. In this Help Net Security video, David Senecal, VP of Architecture and Research at Arkose Labs, talks about the economics involved in online fraud attacks, and illustrates what type of fraud enables attackers to make a living.
Cumulative merchant losses to online payment fraud globally between 2023 and 2027 will exceed $343 billion, according to Juniper Research. As a comparison, this equates to over 350% of Apple's reported net income in the 2021 fiscal year, showing the massive extent of these losses.
Dark Web credit card fraud less pervasive but still an ongoing problem. Stolen credit card data is always a hot item for sale on the Dark Web, particularly if the package includes not just the card number but the expiration date and CVV code.
Traditional identity fraud losses, caused by criminals illegally using victims' information to steal money, exploded in 2021 to $24 billion - an alarming 79% increase over 2020, according to Javelin Strategy & Research. The number of adults in the United States impacted by traditional identity fraud grew more than 50%, reaching more than 15 million victims, a Javelin identity fraud study reveals.
As the popularity of Buy Now, Pay Later grows, organizations and consumers must remain vigilant or risk becoming a victim of fraud, as account takeover attacks - where cybercriminals take ownership of online accounts using stolen passwords and usernames - surged by 148% last year. In this Help Net Security video, Lynn Marks, Senior Product Manager at Imperva, discusses how organizations need to prepare for fraudulent BNPL activity.
A man suspected of providing the IT infrastructure behind the Gozi banking trojan has been extradited to the US to face a string of computer fraud charges. According to court documents [PDF], Paunescu allegedly ran a "Bulletproof hosting" service using computers in Romania, America, and other locations to help cybercriminals distribute Gozi and other malware including the Zeus Trojan and SpyEye Trojan.
Two Florida residents will spend years behind bars and pay more than half a million dollars for wire fraud and identity theft, among other illicit deeds, for running COVID-19 scams. US District Judge William Jung on Friday sentenced Randy Xavier Jones, a 34-year-old man of Sarasota, Florida, to five years and one month in federal prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Cumulative merchant losses to online payment fraud globally between 2023 and 2027 will exceed $343 billion, according to Juniper Research. Online payment fraud includes losses across the sales of digital goods, physical goods, money transfer transactions and banking, as well as purchases like airline ticketing.
In the first half of 2022, BioCatch estimates fraudulent transfers to money mule accounts totaled $3 billion and that there are approximately 2 million mule accounts in the US. Additionally, researchers found that the average mule transaction amount is $1,500 - a low amount to avoid detection when executing mule campaigns at a large scale. In this Help Net Security video, Erin Englund, Threat Analytics Lead at BioCatch, explains what money mules are, why are they becoming so prevalent, and how we can defend against them.