Category Archives: Cybersecurity

You’ve probably never heard of “16Shop,” but there’s a good chance someone using it has tried to phish you. A 16Shop phishing page spoofing Apple and targeting Japanese users. Image: Akamai.com. The international police organization INTERPOL said last week it had shuttered the notorious 16Shop, a popular phishing-as-a-service platform launched in 2017 that made itContinue reading “Karma Catches Up to Global Phishing Service 16Shop”

John Clifton Davies, a convicted fraudster estimated to have bilked dozens of technology startups out of more than $30 million through phony investment schemes, has a brand new pair of scam companies that are busy dashing startup dreams: A fake investment firm called Equity-Invest[.]ch, and Diligere[.]co.uk, a scam due diligence company that Equity-Invest insists allContinue reading “Diligere, Equity-Invest Are New Firms of U.K. Con Man”

Microsoft Corp. today issued software updates to plug more than 70 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related products, including multiple zero-day vulnerabilities currently being exploited in the wild. Six of the flaws fixed today earned Microsoft’s “critical” rating, meaning malware or miscreants could use them to install software on a vulnerable WindowsContinue reading “Microsoft Patch Tuesday, August 2023 Edition”

WormGPT, a private new chatbot service advertised as a way to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to write malicious software without all the pesky prohibitions on such activity enforced by the likes of ChatGPT and Google Bard, has started adding restrictions of its own on how the service can be used. Faced with customers trying toContinue reading “Meet the Brains Behind the Malware-Friendly AI Chat Service ‘WormGPT’”

One frustrating aspect of email phishing is the frequency with which scammers fall back on tried-and-true methods that really have no business working these days. Like attaching a phishing email to a traditional, clean email message, or leveraging link redirects on LinkedIn, or abusing an encoding method that makes it easy to disguise booby-trapped MicrosoftContinue reading “Teach a Man to Phish and He’s Set for Life”

Researchers say mobile malware purveyors have been abusing a bug in the Google Android platform that lets them sneak malicious code into benign mobile apps and evade security scanning tools. Google says it has updated its app malware detection mechanisms in response to the new research. At issue is a mobile malware obfuscation method identifiedContinue reading “How Malicious Android Apps Slip Into Disguise”

The Russian government today handed down a treason conviction and 14-year prison sentence on Iyla Sachkov, the former founder and CEO of one of Russia’s largest cybersecurity firms. Sachkov, 37, has been detained for nearly two years under charges that the Kremlin has kept classified and hidden from public view, and he joins a growingContinue reading “Russia Sends Cybersecurity CEO to Jail for 14 Years”

Researchers this month uncovered a two-year-old Linux-based remote access trojan dubbed AVrecon that enslaves Internet routers into botnet that bilks online advertisers and performs password-spraying attacks. Now new findings reveal that AVrecon is the malware engine behind a 12-year-old service called SocksEscort, which rents hacked residential and small business devices to cybercriminals looking to hideContinue reading “Who and What is Behind the Malware Proxy Service SocksEscort?”

Many things have changed since 2018, such as the names of the companies in the Fortune 100 list. But one aspect of that vaunted list that hasn’t shifted much since is that very few of these companies list any security professionals within their top executive ranks. The next time you receive a breach notification letterContinue reading “Few Fortune 100 Firms List Security Pros in Their Executive Ranks”

[This is Part III in a series on research conducted for a recent Hulu documentary on the 2015 hack of marital infidelity website AshleyMadison.com.] In 2019, a Canadian company called Defiant Tech Inc. pleaded guilty to running LeakedSource[.]com, a service that sold access to billions of passwords and other data exposed in countless data breaches.Continue reading “LeakedSource Owner Quit Ashley Madison a Month Before 2015 Hack”