Catégorie : Actualités

John Clifton Davies, a 60-year-old con man from the United Kingdom who fled the country in 2015 before being sentenced to 12 years in prison for fraud, has enjoyed a successful life abroad swindling technology startups by pretending to be a billionaire investor. Davies’ newest invention appears to be “CodesToYou,” which purports to be a “full cycle software development company” based in the U.K. The scam artist John Bernard a.k.a. Alan John Mykailov (left) in a recent Zoom call, and a mugshot of John Clifton Davies from nearly a decade earlier. Several articles here have delved into the history of John Bernard, the pseudonym used by a fake billionaire technology investor who tricked dozens of startups into giving him tens of millions of dollars. John Bernard’s real name is John…

Authorities in Germany this week seized Internet servers that powered FlyHosting, a dark web offering that catered to cybercriminals operating DDoS-for-hire services, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. FlyHosting first advertised on cybercrime forums in November 2022, saying it was a Germany-based hosting firm that was open for business to anyone looking for a reliable place to host malware, botnet controllers, or DDoS-for-hire infrastructure. A seizure notice left on the FlyHosting domains. A statement released today by the German Federal Criminal Police Office says they served eight search warrants on March 30, and identified five individuals aged 16-24 suspected of operating “an internet service” since mid-2021. The German authorities did not name the suspects or the Internet service in question. “Previously unknown perpetrators used the Internet service provided by the suspects in particular…

The United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has been busy setting up phony DDoS-for-hire websites that seek to collect information on users, remind them that launching DDoS attacks is illegal, and generally increase the level of paranoia for people looking to hire such services. The warning displayed to users on one of the NCA’s fake booter sites. Image: NCA. The NCA says all of its fake so-called “booter” or “stresser” sites — which have so far been accessed by several thousand people — have been created to look like they offer the tools and services that enable cyber criminals to execute these attacks. “However, after users register, rather than being given access to cyber crime tools, their data is collated by investigators,” reads an NCA advisory on the program. “Users…

Google says it has suspended the app for the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo after malware was found in versions of the app. The move comes just weeks after Chinese security researchers published an analysis suggesting the popular e-commerce app sought to seize total control over affected devices by exploiting multiple security vulnerabilities in a variety of Android-based smartphones. In November 2022, researchers at Google’s Project Zero warned about active attacks on Samsung mobile phones which chained together three security vulnerabilities that Samsung patched in March 2021, and which would have allowed an app to add or read any files on the device. Google said it believes the exploit chain for Samsung devices belonged to a “commercial surveillance vendor,” without elaborating further. The highly technical writeup also did not name the…

A new breach involving data from nine million AT&T customers is a fresh reminder that your mobile provider likely collects and shares a great deal of information about where you go and what you do with your mobile device — unless and until you affirmatively opt out of this data collection. Here’s a primer on why you might want to do that, and how. Image: Shutterstock Telecommunications giant AT&T disclosed this month that a breach at a marketing vendor exposed certain account information for nine million customers. AT&T said the data exposed did not include sensitive information, such as credit card or Social Security numbers, or account passwords, but was limited to “Customer Proprietary Network Information” (CPNI), such as the number of lines on an account. Certain questions may be…

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this week arrested a New York man on suspicion of running BreachForums, a popular English-language cybercrime forum where some of the world biggest hacked databases routinely first show up for sale. The forum’s administrator “Pompompurin” has been a thorn in the side of the FBI for years, and BreachForums is widely considered a reincarnation of RaidForums, a remarkably similar crime forum that the FBI infiltrated and dismantled in 2022. FBI agents carting items out of Fitzpatrick’s home on March 15. Image: News 12 Westchester. In an affidavit filed with the District Court for the Southern District of New York, FBI Special Agent John Langmire said that at around 4:30 p.m. on March 15, 2023, he led a team of law enforcement agents that…

Microsoft on Tuesday released updates to quash at least 74 security bugs in its Windows operating systems and software. Two of those flaws are already being actively attacked, including an especially severe weakness in Microsoft Outlook that can be exploited without any user interaction. The Outlook vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) affects all versions of Microsoft Outlook from 2013 to the newest. Microsoft said it has seen evidence that attackers are exploiting this flaw, which can be done without any user interaction by sending a booby-trapped email that triggers automatically when retrieved by the email server — before the email is even viewed in the Preview Pane. While CVE-2023-23397 is labeled as an “Elevation of Privilege” vulnerability, that label doesn’t accurately reflect its severity, said Kevin Breen, director of cyber threat research at…

Two U.S. men have been charged with hacking into a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) online portal that taps into 16 different federal law enforcement databases. Both are alleged to be part of a larger criminal organization that specializes in using fake emergency data requests from compromised police and government email accounts to publicly threaten and extort their victims. Prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York today unsealed criminal complaints against Sagar Steven Singh — also known as “Weep” — a 19-year-old from Pawtucket, Rhode Island; and Nicholas Ceraolo, 25, of Queens, NY, who allegedly also went by the handles “Convict” and “Ominus.” The Justice Department says Singh and Ceraolo belong to a group of cybercriminals known to its members as “ViLE,” who specialize in obtaining personal information about…

A Croatian national has been arrested for allegedly operating NetWire, a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) marketed on cybercrime forums since 2012 as a stealthy way to spy on infected systems and siphon passwords. The arrest coincided with a seizure of the NetWire sales website by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). While the defendant in this case hasn’t yet been named publicly, the NetWire website has been leaking information about the likely true identity and location of its owner for the past 11 years. Typically installed by booby-trapped Microsoft Office documents and distributed via email, NetWire is a multi-platform threat that is capable of targeting not only Microsoft Windows machines but also Android, Linux and Mac systems. NetWire’s reliability and relatively low cost ($80-$140 depending on features) has made…

Posted by Oliver Chang and Andrew Pollock, Google Open Source Security Team It is an interesting time for everyone concerned with open source vulnerabilities. The U.S. Executive Order on Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity requirements for vulnerability disclosure programs and assurances for software used by the US government will go into effect later this year. Finding and fixing security vulnerabilities has never been more important, yet with increasing interest in the area, the vulnerability management space has become fragmented—there are a lot of new tools and competing standards. In 2021, we announced the launch of OSV, a database of open source vulnerabilities built partially from vulnerabilities found through Google’s OSS-Fuzz program. OSV has grown since then and now includes a widely adopted OpenSSF schema and a vulnerability scanner. In this blog…