Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) briefed Capitol Hill staff recently on hardening the security of their mobile devices, after a contacts list stolen from the personal phone of the White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was…
Category: Krebs on Security
Inside a Dark Adtech Empire Fed by Fake CAPTCHAs
Late last year, security researchers made a startling discovery: Kremlin-backed disinformation campaigns were bypassing moderation on social media platforms by leveraging the same malicious advertising technology that powers a sprawling ecosystem of online hucksters and website hackers. A new report…
Patch Tuesday, June 2025 Edition
Microsoft today released security updates to fix at least 67 vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and software. Redmond warns that one of the flaws is already under active attack, and that software blueprints showing how to exploit a pervasive…
Proxy Services Feast on Ukraine’s IP Address Exodus
Ukraine has seen nearly one-fifth of its Internet space come under Russian control or sold to Internet address brokers since February 2022, a new study finds. The analysis indicates large chunks of Ukrainian Internet address space are now in the…
U.S. Sanctions Cloud Provider ‘Funnull’ as Top Source of ‘Pig Butchering’ Scams
The U.S. government today imposed economic sanctions on Funnull Technology Inc., a Philippines-based company that provides computer infrastructure for hundreds of thousands of websites involved in virtual currency investment scams, commonly known as “pig butchering.” In January 2025, KrebsOnSecurity detailed…
Pakistan Arrests 21 in ‘Heartsender’ Malware Service
Authorities in Pakistan have arrested 21 individuals accused of operating “Heartsender,” a once popular spam and malware dissemination service that operated for more than a decade. The main clientele for HeartSender were organized crime groups that tried to trick victim…
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…
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…
Breachforums Boss to Pay $700k in Healthcare Breach
In what experts are calling a novel legal outcome, the 22-year-old former administrator of the cybercrime community Breachforums will forfeit nearly $700,000 to settle a civil lawsuit from a health insurance company whose customer data was posted for sale on…
Patch Tuesday, May 2025 Edition
Microsoft on Tuesday released software updates to fix at least 70 vulnerabilities in Windows and related products, including five zero-day flaws that are already seeing active exploitation. Adding to the sense of urgency with this month’s patch batch from Redmond…
Pakistani Firm Shipped Fentanyl Analogs, Scams to US
A Texas firm recently charged with conspiring to distribute synthetic opioids in the United States is at the center of a vast network of companies in the U.S. and Pakistan whose employees are accused of using online ads to scam…
xAI Dev Leaks API Key for Private SpaceX, Tesla LLMs
A employee at Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI leaked a private key on GitHub that for the past two months could have allowed anyone to query private xAI large language models (LLMs) which appear to have been custom made for…
Alleged ‘Scattered Spider’ Member Extradited to U.S.
A 23-year-old Scottish man thought to be a member of the prolific Scattered Spider cybercrime group was extradited last week from Spain to the United States, where he is facing charges of wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft. U.S. prosecutors…
DOGE Worker’s Code Supports NLRB Whistleblower
A whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleged last week that denizens of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) siphoned gigabytes of data from the agency’s sensitive case files in early March. The whistleblower said accounts created…
Whistleblower: DOGE Siphoned NLRB Case Data
A security architect with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleges that employees from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) transferred gigabytes of sensitive data from agency case files in early March, using short-lived accounts configured to leave few…
Funding Expires for Key Cyber Vulnerability Database
A critical resource that cybersecurity professionals worldwide rely on to identify, mitigate and fix security vulnerabilities in software and hardware is in danger of breaking down. The federally funded, non-profit research and development organization MITRE warned today that its contract…
Funding Expires for Key Cyber Vulnerability Database
A critical resource that cybersecurity professionals worldwide rely on to identify, mitigate and fix security vulnerabilities in software and hardware is in danger of breaking down. The federally funded, non-profit research and development organization MITRE warned today that its contract…
Trump Revenge Tour Targets Cyber Leaders, Elections
President Trump last week revoked security clearances for Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) who was fired by Trump after declaring the 2020 election the most secure in U.S. history. The White House…
China-based SMS Phishing Triad Pivots to Banks
China-based purveyors of SMS phishing kits are enjoying remarkable success converting phished payment card data into mobile wallets from Apple and Google. Until recently, the so-called “Smishing Triad” mainly impersonated toll road operators and shipping companies. But experts say these…
Patch Tuesday, April 2025 Edition
Microsoft today released updates to plug at least 121 security holes in its Windows operating systems and software, including one vulnerability that is already being exploited in the wild. Eleven of those flaws earned Microsoft’s most-dire “critical” rating, meaning malware…