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Category: fbi

North Korea–linked APT Kimsuky behind quishing attacks, FBI warns

FBI warns that North Korea–linked APT group Kimsuky is targeting governments, think tanks, and academic institutions with quishing attacks. North Korea–linked APT group Kimsuky is targeting government agencies, academic institutions, and think tanks using spear-phishing emails that contain malicious QR codes (quishing), the FBI warns. “As of 2025, Kimsuky actors have targeted think tanks, academic…

FBI: Crooks manipulate online photos to fuel virtual kidnapping ransoms

The FBI warns of criminals altering images shared on social media and using them as fake proof of life photos in virtual kidnapping ransom scams. The FBI warns that criminals are altering publicly available photos to create fake “proof-of-life” images used in virtual kidnapping scams, posing as kidnappers and demanding ransom. “The Federal Bureau of…

Top counter antivirus service disrupted in global takedown

AVCheck, a large-scale service that cybercriminals use to check if their malware can be detected by various antivirus tools, was seized and taken offline Tuesday by a globally coordinated law enforcement action. Officials on Thursday said they seized four domains and a server associated with the online software crypting syndicate. The site for the counter…

Oops: DanaBot Malware Devs Infected Their Own PCs

The U.S. government today unsealed criminal charges against 16 individuals accused of operating and selling DanaBot, a prolific strain of information-stealing malware that has been sold on Russian cybercrime forums since 2018. The FBI says a newer version of DanaBot was used for espionage, and that many of the defendants exposed their real-life identities after…

Massachusetts man will plead guilty in PowerSchool hack case

A Massachusetts man will plead guilty to charges related to the hack of PowerSchool, the education software vendor that says it supports more than 60 million students, and that led to ransom demands at school boards and districts across the United States. In court documents filed Tuesday, prosecutors spelled out charges against 19-year-old Assumption University…

KrebsOnSecurity Hit With Near-Record 6.3 Tbps DDoS

KrebsOnSecurity last week was hit by a near record distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that clocked in at more than 6.3 terabits of data per second (a terabit is one trillion bits of data). The brief attack appears to have been a test run for a massive new Internet of Things (IoT) botnet capable of launching…

US seizes Anyproxy, 5socks botnets and indicts alleged administrators

Federal authorities seized two domains and indicted four foreign individuals for alleged involvement in a long-running botnet service that infected older wireless internet routers, the Justice Department said Friday.  The malware created for the botnet allowed infected routers to be reconfigured, which granted unauthorized access to third parties and made the routers available for sale…

BadBazaar and Moonshine malware targets Taiwanese, Tibetan and Uyghur groups, U.K. warns

Two spyware variants are targeting Uyghur, Taiwanese and Tibetan groups and individuals, the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre warned in a joint alert Wednesday with Western allies. Cybersecurity researchers have previously linked the BADBAZAAR and MOONSHINE spyware to the Chinese government. The variants mentioned in Wednesday’s alert trojanize apps that are of interest to the…

Privacy fights over expiring surveillance law loom after House hearing

Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee say privacy protections under a bill Congress passed to re-up a major surveillance law aren’t strong enough, and are gearing up for additional changes for when the legislation is set to expire next year. Legislative battles over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — under which…

Cyber Forensic Expert in 2,000+ Cases Faces FBI Probe

A Minnesota cybersecurity and computer forensics expert whose testimony has featured in thousands of courtroom trials over the past 30 years is facing questions about his credentials and an inquiry from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Legal experts say the inquiry could be grounds to reopen a number of adjudicated cases in which the…

Feds Link $150M Cyberheist to 2022 LastPass Hacks

In September 2023, KrebsOnSecurity published findings from security researchers who concluded that a series of six-figure cyberheists across dozens of victims resulted from thieves cracking master passwords stolen from the password manager service LastPass in 2022. In a court filing this week, U.S. federal agents investigating a spectacular $150 million cryptocurrency heist said they had…

Salt Typhoon telecom breach remarkable for its ‘indiscriminate’ targeting, FBI official says

One of the most notable elements of the monumental hack of major telecommunications companies is just how “indiscriminate” it was in its pursuit of data, a top FBI official said Wednesday. The FBI has been investigating the breach, which it has blamed on Chinese government hackers commonly known as Salt Typhoon. “What we found particularly…

FBI, Dutch Police Disrupt ‘Manipulaters’ Phishing Gang

The FBI and authorities in The Netherlands this week seized dozens of servers and domains for a hugely popular spam and malware dissemination service operating out of Pakistan. The proprietors of the service, who use the collective nickname “The Manipulaters,” have been the subject of three stories published here since 2015. The FBI said the…

FBI nominee Kash Patel gets questions on cybercrime investigations, Silk Road founder, surveillance powers

A senator on Thursday questioned whether the president’s pick to lead the FBI might harm cybercrime investigations with his plans for the bureau. At a nomination hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., asked Kash Patel about comments he made in September. “I’d shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and…

US Justice Department says cybercrime forum allegedly affected 17 million Americans

U.S. prosecutors accused an Argentinian national living in Spain of being an “active administrator” of Nulled, one of the two hacking forums seized and shut down by authorities. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Chinese Innovations Spawn Wave of Toll Phishing Via SMS

Residents across the United States are being inundated with text messages purporting to come from toll road operators like E-ZPass, warning that recipients face fines if a delinquent toll fee remains unpaid. Researchers say the surge in SMS spam coincides with new features added to a popular commercial phishing kit sold in China that makes…

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U.S. sanctions take aim at Chinese company said to aid hackers’ massive botnet

The U.S. government on Friday sanctioned a Chinese company that Western nations had connected to a Beijing-sponsored hacking group’s botnet, which had compromised hundreds of thousands of devices before a joint takedown operation last year. Flax Typhoon hackers made use of infrastructure at Integrity Technology Group to exploit victims, according to the Treasury Department’s Office…

Kalshi CEO admits enlisting influencers to dis Polymarket in a now-deleted podcast segment

Kalshi’s CEO, Tarek Mansour, confirmed on a podcast interview that his employees did ask social media influencers to promote memes about the FBI’s raid on the home of his arch rival, the CEO of Polymarket.  Both of these companies offer competing events-betting markets, a new kind of betting industry where people wager about the outcomes…

FBI: Spike in Hacked Police Emails, Fake Subpoenas

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is urging police departments and governments worldwide to beef up security around their email systems, citing a recent increase in cybercriminal services that use hacked police email accounts to send unauthorized subpoenas and customer data requests to U.S.-based technology companies. In an alert (PDF) published this week, the FBI…