#blog

A nonprofit organization is suing the state of Massachusetts on behalf of thousands of low-income families who were collectively robbed of more than a $1 million in food assistance benefits by card skimming devices secretly installed at cash machines and grocery store checkout lanes across the state. Federal law bars states from replacing these benefits using federal funds, and a recent rash of skimming incidents nationwide has disproportionately affected those receiving food assistance via state-issued prepaid debit cards.

Let's face it: Having “2022 election” in the headline above is probably the only reason anyone might read this story today. Still, while most of us here in the United States are anxiously awaiting the results of how well we've patched our Democracy, it seems fitting that Microsoft Corp. today released gobs of security patches for its ubiquitous Windows operating systems. November's patch batch includes fixes for a whopping six zero-day security vulnerabilities that miscreants and malware are already exploiting in the wild.

For whatever reason, the majority of the phony LinkedIn profiles reviewed by this author have involved young women with profile photos that appear to be generated by artificial intelligence (AI) tools. We’re seeing rapid advances in AI-based synthetic image generation technology and we’ve created a deep learning model to better catch profiles made with this technology. AI-based image generators can create an unlimited number of unique, high-quality profile photos that do not correspond to real people. Fake accounts sometimes use these convincing, AI-generated profile photos to make their fake LinkedIn profile appear more authentic.

A 25-year-old Finnish man has been charged with extorting a once popular and now-bankrupt online psychotherapy company and its patients. Finnish authorities rarely name suspects in an investigation, but they were willing to make an exception for Julius "Zeekill" Kivimaki, a notorious hacker who -- at the tender age of 17 -- had been convicted of more than 50,000 cybercrimes, including data breaches, payment fraud, operating botnets, and calling in bomb threats.

A 26-year-old Ukrainian man is awaiting extradition to the United States on charges that he acted as a core developer for Raccoon, a "malware-as-a-service" offering that helped paying customers steal passwords and financial data from millions of cybercrime victims. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that the defendant was busted in March 2022, after fleeing mandatory military service in Ukraine in the weeks following the Russian invasion.

Hello everyone! This episode will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for October 2022, including vulnerabilities that were added between September and October Patch Tuesdays. As usual, I use my open source Vulristics project to create the report. All vulnerabilities: 105Urgent: 2Critical: 1High: 29Medium: 71Low: 2 Let’s take a look at the most interesting vulnerabilities: Two […]

Hello everyone! This episode will be about the new hot twenty vulnerabilities from CISA, NSA and FBI, Joint cybersecurity advisory (CSA) AA22-279A, and how I analyzed these vulnerabilities using my open source project Vulristics. Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239105 Americans can’t just release a list of “20 vulnerabilities most commonly exploited in attacks on […]

On October 10, 2022, there were 576,562 LinkedIn accounts that listed their current employer as Apple Inc. The next day, half of those profiles no longer existed. A similarly dramatic drop in the number of LinkedIn profiles claiming employment at Amazon comes as LinkedIn is struggling to combat a significant uptick in the creation of fake employee accounts that pair AI-generated profile photos with text lifted from legitimate users.

When people banking in the United States lose money because their payment card got skimmed at an ATM, gas pump or grocery store checkout terminal, they may face hassles or delays in recovering any lost funds, but they are almost always made whole by their financial institution. Yet, one class of Americans -- those receiving food assistance benefits via state-issued prepaid debit cards -- are particularly exposed to losses from skimming scams, and usually have little recourse to do anything about it.

AMLBot, a service that helps businesses avoid transacting with cryptocurrency wallets that have been sanctioned for cybercrime activity, said an investigation published by KrebsOnSecurity last year helped it shut down three dark web services that secretly resold its technology to help cybercrooks avoid detection by anti-money laundering systems.