Items tagged with cybercrime
When we report on cybersecurity breaches, all too often it involves innocent individuals (or companies) that are on the receiving end of the attack. Such is the case with Chinese hackers that exploited Microsoft Exchange servers. Now, it appears that a hacker vigilante has breached four long-running and venerated Russian cybercrime forums. In two of the hacks, the vigilante made off with the forums’ user databases, which could prove to be problematic for the black-hat hackers on the forums. Earlier in the week, thousands of usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords were leaked on the dark web, and they all seemed to come from an “exclusive crime forum that has for more...
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When is it fair to deem a botnet "complex"? Well, I think it's fair to label it as such when it requires a collection of cybercrime fighters from the US and Europe to ultimately give it its final blow. Here's some context: "On 8 April, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT), joined forces with the Dutch authorities and the FBI, and U.S-based representatives at the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force- International Cyber Crime Coordination Cell (IC4) along with private sector partners, to target the Beebone (also known as AAEH) botnet". That sure is a mouthful. From a technological standpoint, the Beebone botnet is rather fascinating,...
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Microsoft has long battled botnets and the cybercriminals who create them, but today marks a new level of intensity in the fight: Microsoft today opened the Cybercrime Center, a massive research and command center for Microsoft’s top security experts. One of the offices at the new Microsoft Cybercrime Center. Image credit: Microsoft This is where the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) will take on the digital underworld. The lab is packed with the latest forensic hardware and software, as well as tools for organizing and storing evidence from past crimes, such as counterfeit software discs. The DCU will uncover cybercrimes that have already been committed, stop digital criminal activity...
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In what sounds like a scene out of one of those (well meaning, but never remotely accurate) cyber-action movies, teams of technicians from Symantec and Microsoft’s Digital Crimes unit wielding a court order from the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, were escorted by U.S. Federal Marshals in raids on data centers in New Jersey and Virginia yesterday. Yes, that happened. According to Reuters, the purpose of the raids was to shut down the Bamital botnet by yanking offline servers that had been used to control between 300,000 and 1 million infected PCs as part of a massive click fraud campaign perpetrated by at least 18 individuals scattered across the globe, including in Russia,...
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According to new research sponsored by HP, the cost and frequency of cybercrime has increased for the third straight year. The third-annual Cost of Cyber Crime Study shows the occurrence of cyberattacks has more than doubled since 2010. The cost of the attacks has increased by nearly 40 percent over the same three year period. The study was conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by HP. The 2012 Cost of Cyber Crime Study took a look at a sample of U.S. organizations and found that the average annualized cost of cybercrime was $8.9 million. The study also shows a 42 percent increase in the number of cyberattacks. On average, organizations experienced about 102 successful attacks per week....
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The rise of social networking has given rise to a whole new species of cyber criminals, experts warn.When people sign up on Facebook, for example, they tend not to think twice about putting in their birth date. But combine that with all sorts of other personal data in your profile — contact info including phone numbers and e-mail addresses, job details and sometimes even an address — and someone with less-than-good intentions could possibly wreak havoc in your name.Agence Presse-France reported on the Campus Party gathering of "Internet enthusiasts" in Valencia, Spain. Asier Martinez, a security specialist at global IT solutions provider Panda Security, told the crowd gathered that they weren't...
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