Security News
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced a record-breaking $299,997,000 fine imposed on an international network of companies for placing five billion robocalls to more than 500...
A new report from Forrester is cautioning enterprises to be on the lookout for five deepfake scams that can wreak havoc. The deepfake scams are fraud, stock price manipulation, reputation and brand, employee experience and HR, and amplification.
FBI warns of a surge in tech support scams targeting the elderly across the United States and urging victims to dispatch cash concealed within magazines or similar items through shipping firms. While tech support scams have been around for years, the FBI says this is a departure from scammers' conventional tactics of soliciting their targets to send money using bank transfers, cryptocurrencies, or gift cards.
Experts at Group-IB noted both an increase in the number of scams as well as the number of people engaged in scam activity, both driven by the more frequent use of social media to spread scams and the growing automation of scam processes. In the APAC region, 58% of scam resources targeting companies in seven core economic sectors used this vector, while in Europe, messengers remained the primary vector for scam activity.
Cybersecurity researchers have exposed the workings of a scam ring called CryptosLabs that's estimated to have made €480 million in illegal profits by targeting users in French-speaking individuals in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg since April 2018. The syndicate's massive fake investment schemes primarily involve impersonating 40 well-known banks, fin-techs, asset management firms, and crypto platforms, setting up a scam infrastructure spanning over 350 domains hosted on more than 80 servers, Group-IB said in a deep-dive report.
A U.K. citizen who took part in the massive July 2020 hack of Twitter has been sentenced to five years in prison in the U.S. Joseph James O'Connor, 24, was awarded the sentence on Friday in the Southern District of New York, a little over a month after he pleaded guilty to the criminal schemes. The infamous Twitter breach allowed the defendant and his co-conspirators to obtain unauthorized access to backend tools used by Twitter, abusing them to hijack 130 popular accounts to perpetrate a crypto scam that netted them about $120,000 in illegal profits.
The agency said there has been an "Uptick" in reports since April of deepfakes being used in sextortion scams, with the images or videos being shared online to harass the victims with demands for money, gift cards, or other payments. In the advisory, the FBI noted the rapid advancements in AI technologies and increased availability of tools that allow creation of deepfake material.
30% of adults have fallen victim or know someone who has fallen victim to an online scam while trying to save money when booking travel, according to McAfee. Online travel scams can take many forms, with the research finding 14% of all adults have been tricked into making payments through fraudulent platforms and 18% have had their identity stolen when booking online.
A U.K. national responsible for his role as the administrator of the now-defunct iSpoof online phone number spoofing service has been sentenced to 13 years and 4 months in prison. He pleaded guilty last month to a number of cyber offenses, including facilitating fraud and possessing and transferring criminal property.
Phishing scams pose an escalating danger as cybercriminals employ increasingly sophisticated techniques, rendering their detection and prevention more challenging. In this Help Net Security video, Abhilash Garimella, Head of Research at Bolster, talks about the evolution of phishing and scam websites in 2023.