2019

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Data Enrichment, People Data Labs and Another 622M Email Addresses

Troy Hunt

Until this month, I'd never heard of People Data Labs (PDL). I'd certainly heard of the sector they operate in - "Data Enrichment" - but I'd never heard of the company itself. I've become more familiar with this sector over recent years due to the frequency with which it's been suffering data breaches that have ultimately landed in my inbox. For example, there's Dun & Bradstreet's NetProspex which leaked 33M records in 2017 , Exactis who had 132M records breached last year and the Apollo dat

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It’s Way Too Easy to Get a.gov Domain Name

Krebs on Security

Many readers probably believe they can trust links and emails coming from U.S. federal government domain names, or else assume there are at least more stringent verification requirements involved in obtaining a.gov domain versus a commercial one ending in.com or.org. But a recent experience suggests this trust may be severely misplaced, and that it is relatively straightforward for anyone to obtain their very own.gov domain.

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Major Hotel Group Leaks 1TB of Customer Data

Adam Levin

One terabyte of data belonging to a major hotel booking platform was found leaked online. A huge trove of customer data belonging to Gekko Group was found online in an unsecured format. The data contained a wide array of records, including full names, credit card details, client login information, email addresses, home addresses and hotel reservations.

B2B 295
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Facebook Plans on Backdooring WhatsApp

Schneier on Security

This article points out that Facebook's planned content moderation scheme will result in an encryption backdoor into WhatsApp: In Facebook's vision, the actual end-to-end encryption client itself such as WhatsApp will include embedded content moderation and blacklist filtering algorithms. These algorithms will be continually updated from a central cloud service, but will run locally on the user's device, scanning each cleartext message before it is sent and each encrypted message after it is dec

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How to Avoid Pitfalls In Automation: Keep Humans In the Loop

Speaker: Erroll Amacker

Automation is transforming finance but without strong financial oversight it can introduce more risk than reward. From missed discrepancies to strained vendor relationships, accounts payable automation needs a human touch to deliver lasting value. This session is your playbook to get automation right. We’ll explore how to balance speed with control, boost decision-making through human-machine collaboration, and unlock ROI with fewer errors, stronger fraud prevention, and smoother operations.

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MY TAKE: Why DDoS weapons will proliferate with the expansion of IoT and the coming of 5G

The Last Watchdog

A couple of high-profile distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks will surely go down in history as watershed events – each for different reasons. Related: IoT botnets now available for economical DDoS blasts. In March 2013, several impossibly massive waves of nuisance requests – peaking as high as 300 gigabytes per second— swamped Spamhaus , knocking the anti-spam organization off line for extended periods.

DDOS 263
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Hidden Cam Above Bluetooth Pump Skimmer

Krebs on Security

Tiny hidden spy cameras are a common sight at ATMs that have been tampered with by crooks who specialize in retrofitting the machines with card skimmers. But until this past week I’d never heard of hidden cameras being used at gas pumps in tandem with Bluetooth-based card skimming devices. Apparently, I’m not alone. “I believe this is the first time I’ve seen a camera on a gas pump with a Bluetooth card skimmer,” said Detective Matt Jogodka of the Las Vegas Police Departm

Banking 354

LifeWorks

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Sale of 4 Million Stolen Cards Tied to Breaches at 4 Restaurant Chains

Krebs on Security

On Nov. 23, one of the cybercrime underground’s largest bazaars for buying and selling stolen payment card data announced the immediate availability of some four million freshly-hacked debit and credit cards. KrebsOnSecurity has learned this latest batch of cards was siphoned from four different compromised restaurant chains that are most prevalent across the midwest and eastern United States.

Marketing 348
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NY Payroll Company Vanishes With $35 Million

Krebs on Security

MyPayrollHR , a now defunct cloud-based payroll processing firm based in upstate New York, abruptly ceased operations this past week after stiffing employees at thousands of companies. The ongoing debacle, which allegedly involves malfeasance on the part of the payroll company’s CEO, resulted in countless people having money drained from their bank accounts and has left nearly $35 million worth of payroll and tax payments in legal limbo.

Banking 280
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Who Owns Your Wireless Service? Crooks Do.

Krebs on Security

Incessantly annoying and fraudulent robocalls. Corrupt wireless company employees taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to unlock and hijack mobile phone service. Wireless providers selling real-time customer location data, despite repeated promises to the contrary. A noticeable uptick in SIM-swapping attacks that lead to multi-million dollar cyberheists.

Wireless 279
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Capital One Data Theft Impacts 106M People

Krebs on Security

Federal prosecutors this week charged a Seattle woman with stealing data from more than 100 million credit applications made with Capital One Financial Corp. Incredibly, much of this breach played out publicly over several months on social media and other open online platforms. What follows is a closer look at the accused, and what this incident may mean for consumers and businesses.

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Why Giant Content Libraries Do Nothing for Your Employees’ Cyber Resilience

Many cybersecurity awareness platforms offer massive content libraries, yet they fail to enhance employees’ cyber resilience. Without structured, engaging, and personalized training, employees struggle to retain and apply key cybersecurity principles. Phished.io explains why organizations should focus on interactive, scenario-based learning rather than overwhelming employees with excessive content.

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What You Should Know About the Equifax Data Breach Settlement

Krebs on Security

Big-three credit bureau Equifax has reportedly agreed to pay at least $650 million to settle lawsuits stemming from a 2017 breach that let intruders steal personal and financial data on roughly 148 million Americans. Here’s a brief primer that attempts to break down what this settlement means for you, and what it says about the value of your identity.

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QuickBooks Cloud Hosting Firm iNSYNQ Hit in Ransomware Attack

Krebs on Security

Cloud hosting provider iNSYNQ says it is trying to recover from a ransomware attack that shut down its network and has left customers unable to access their accounting data for the past three days. Unfortunately for iNSYNQ, the company appears to be turning a deaf ear to the increasingly anxious cries from its users for more information about the incident.

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Project Svalbard: The Future of Have I Been Pwned

Troy Hunt

Back in 2013, I was beginning to get the sense that data breaches were becoming a big thing. The prevalence of them seemed to be really ramping up as was the impact they were having on those of us that found ourselves in them, myself included. Increasingly, I was writing about what I thought was a pretty fascinating segment of the infosec industry; password reuse across Gawker and Twitter resulting in a breach of the former sending Acai berry spam via the latter.

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The Risk of Weak Online Banking Passwords

Krebs on Security

If you bank online and choose weak or re-used passwords, there’s a decent chance your account could be pilfered by cyberthieves — even if your bank offers multi-factor authentication as part of its login process. This story is about how crooks increasingly are abusing third-party financial aggregation services like Mint , Plaid , Yodlee , YNAB and others to surveil and drain consumer accounts online.

Banking 279
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Zero Trust Mandate: The Realities, Requirements and Roadmap

The DHS compliance audit clock is ticking on Zero Trust. Government agencies can no longer ignore or delay their Zero Trust initiatives. During this virtual panel discussion—featuring Kelly Fuller Gordon, Founder and CEO of RisX, Chris Wild, Zero Trust subject matter expert at Zermount, Inc., and Principal of Cybersecurity Practice at Eliassen Group, Trey Gannon—you’ll gain a detailed understanding of the Federal Zero Trust mandate, its requirements, milestones, and deadlines.

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Legal Threats Make Powerful Phishing Lures

Krebs on Security

Some of the most convincing email phishing and malware attacks come disguised as nastygrams from a law firm. Such scams typically notify the recipient that he/she is being sued, and instruct them to review the attached file and respond within a few days — or else. Here’s a look at a recent spam campaign that peppered more than 100,000 business email addresses with fake legal threats harboring malware.

Phishing 280
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I'm Leaving IBM

Schneier on Security

Today is my last day at IBM. If you've been following along, IBM bought my startup Resilient Systems in Spring 2016. Since then, I have been with IBM, holding the nicely ambiguous title of "Special Advisor." As of the end of the month, I will be back on my own. I will continue to write and speak, and do the occasional consulting job. I will continue to teach at the Harvard Kennedy School.

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Who’s Behind the GandCrab Ransomware?

Krebs on Security

The crooks behind an affiliate program that paid cybercriminals to install the destructive and wildly successful GandCrab ransomware strain announced on May 31, 2019 they were terminating the program after allegedly having earned more than $2 billion in extortion payouts from victims. What follows is a deep dive into who may be responsible for recruiting new members to help spread the contagion.

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Protecting Yourself from Identity Theft

Schneier on Security

I don't have a lot of good news for you. The truth is there's nothing we can do to protect our data from being stolen by cybercriminals and others. Ten years ago, I could have given you all sorts of advice about using encryption, not sending information over email, securing your web connections, and a host of other things­ -- but most of that doesn't matter anymore.

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Prevent Data Breaches With Zero-Trust Enterprise Password Management

Keeper Security is transforming cybersecurity for people and organizations around the world. Keeper’s affordable and easy-to-use solutions are built on a foundation of zero-trust and zero-knowledge security to protect every user on every device. Our next-generation privileged access management solution deploys in minutes and seamlessly integrates with any tech stack to prevent breaches, reduce help desk costs and ensure compliance.

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Towards an Information Operations Kill Chain

Schneier on Security

Cyberattacks don't magically happen; they involve a series of steps. And far from being helpless, defenders can disrupt the attack at any of those steps. This framing has led to something called the " cybersecurity kill chain ": a way of thinking about cyber defense in terms of disrupting the attacker's process. On a similar note, it's time to conceptualize the "information operations kill chain.

Media 279
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MyPayrollHR CEO Arrested, Admits to $70M Fraud

Krebs on Security

Earlier this month, employees at more than 1,000 companies saw one or two paycheck’s worth of funds deducted from their bank accounts after the CEO of their cloud payroll provider absconded with $35 million in payroll and tax deposits from customers. On Monday, the CEO was arrested and allegedly confessed that the diversion was the last desperate gasp of a financial shell game that earned him $70 million over several years.

Banking 278
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First American Financial Corp. Leaked Hundreds of Millions of Title Insurance Records

Krebs on Security

The Web site for Fortune 500 real estate title insurance giant First American Financial Corp. [ NYSE:FAF ] leaked hundreds of millions of documents related to mortgage deals going back to 2003, until notified this week by KrebsOnSecurity. The digitized records — including bank account numbers and statements, mortgage and tax records, Social Security numbers, wire transaction receipts, and drivers license images — were available without authentication to anyone with a Web browser.

Insurance 279
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How Not to Acknowledge a Data Breach

Krebs on Security

I’m not a huge fan of stories about stories, or those that explore the ins and outs of reporting a breach. But occasionally I feel obligated to publish such accounts when companies respond to a breach report in such a way that it’s crystal clear they wouldn’t know what to do with a data breach if it bit them in the nose, let alone festered unmolested in some dark corner of their operations.

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Optimizing The Modern Developer Experience with Coder

Many software teams have migrated their testing and production workloads to the cloud, yet development environments often remain tied to outdated local setups, limiting efficiency and growth. This is where Coder comes in. In our 101 Coder webinar, you’ll explore how cloud-based development environments can unlock new levels of productivity. Discover how to transition from local setups to a secure, cloud-powered ecosystem with ease.

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Cybersecurity Firm Imperva Discloses Breach

Krebs on Security

Imperva , a leading provider of Internet firewall services that help Web sites block malicious cyberattacks, alerted customers on Tuesday that a recent data breach exposed email addresses, scrambled passwords, API keys and SSL certificates for a subset of its firewall users. Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Imperva sells technology and services designed to detect and block various types of malicious Web traffic, from denial-of-service attacks to digital probes aimed at undermining the security of We

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Experts: Breach at IT Outsourcing Giant Wipro

Krebs on Security

Indian information technology (IT) outsourcing and consulting giant Wipro Ltd. [ NYSE:WIT ] is investigating reports that its own IT systems have been hacked and are being used to launch attacks against some of the company’s customers, multiple sources tell KrebsOnSecurity. Wipro has refused to respond to questions about the alleged incident.

Insurance 279
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Attorney General William Barr on Encryption Policy

Schneier on Security

Yesterday, Attorney General William Barr gave a major speech on encryption policy -- what is commonly known as "going dark." Speaking at Fordham University in New York, he admitted that adding backdoors decreases security but that it is worth it. Some hold this view dogmatically, claiming that it is technologically impossible to provide lawful access without weakening security against unlawful access.

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Programmers Who Don't Understand Security Are Poor at Security

Schneier on Security

A university study confirmed the obvious: if you pay a random bunch of freelance programmers a small amount of money to write security software, they're not going to do a very good job at it. In an experiment that involved 43 programmers hired via the Freelancer.com platform, University of Bonn academics have discovered that developers tend to take the easy way out and write code that stores user passwords in an unsafe manner.

Passwords 279
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The Importance of User Roles and Permissions in Cybersecurity Software

How many people would you trust with your house keys? Chances are, you have a handful of trusted friends and family members who have an emergency copy, but you definitely wouldn’t hand those out too freely. You have stuff that’s worth protecting—and the more people that have access to your belongings, the higher the odds that something will go missing.

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Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords in Plain Text for Years

Krebs on Security

Hundreds of millions of Facebook users had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by thousands of Facebook employees — in some cases going back to 2012, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Facebook says an ongoing investigation has so far found no indication that employees have abused access to this data. Facebook is probing the causes of a series of security failures in which employees built applications that logged unencrypted password data for Facebook users and stored it

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Tracing the Supply Chain Attack on Android

Krebs on Security

Earlier this month, Google disclosed that a supply chain attack by one of its vendors resulted in malicious software being pre-installed on millions of new budget Android devices. Google didn’t exactly name those responsible, but said it believes the offending vendor uses the nicknames “ Yehuo ” or “ Blazefire.” What follows is a deep dive into the identity of that Chinese vendor, which appears to have a long and storied history of pushing the envelope on mobile mal

Mobile 279
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Influence Operations Kill Chain

Schneier on Security

Influence operations are elusive to define. The Rand Corp.'s definition is as good as any: "the collection of tactical information about an adversary as well as the dissemination of propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent." Basically, we know it when we see it, from bots controlled by the Russian Internet Research Agency to Saudi attempts to plant fake stories and manipulate political debate.

Media 278
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Breach at Hy-Vee Supermarket Chain Tied to Sale of 5M+ Stolen Credit, Debit Cards

Krebs on Security

On Tuesday of this week, one of the more popular underground stores peddling credit and debit card data stolen from hacked merchants announced a blockbuster new sale: More than 5.3 million new accounts belonging to cardholders from 35 U.S. states. Multiple sources now tell KrebsOnSecurity that the card data came from compromised gas pumps, coffee shops and restaurants operated by Hy-Vee , an Iowa-based company that operates a chain of more than 245 supermarkets throughout the Midwestern United S

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IDC Analyst Report: The Open Source Blind Spot Putting Businesses at Risk

In a recent study, IDC found that 64% of organizations said they were already using open source in software development with a further 25% planning to in the next year. Most organizations are unaware of just how much open-source code is used and underestimate their dependency on it. As enterprises grow the use of open-source software, they face a new challenge: understanding the scope of open-source software that's being used throughout the organization and the corresponding exposure.