Cybercrime

CircleID’s Top 10 Posts of 2018

It is once again time for our annual review of posts that received the most attention on CircleID during the past year. Congratulations to all the 2018 participants for sharing their thoughts and making a difference in the industry. more

McAfee Labs 2018 Report Reveals 480 New Threats Per Minute, Sharp Increase in IoT-Focused Malware

In its latest quarterly report, McAfee Labs has reported seeing an average of 480 new threats per minute and a sharp increase in malware targeting IoT devices. more

Criminals Using New Phishing Techniques to Hide from Victims and Investigators, Reports APWG

According to the APWG's new Phishing Activity Trends Report released today, phishers are using new techniques to carry out their attacks and hide their origins in order to make the most of every phishing campaign. more

NTIA Releases Cybersecurity Road Map for “Building a More Resilient Internet”

U.S. Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security have released a road map setting out steps to stop the cyber threat to nations internet infrastructure, announced NTIA. more

Neglected Domain Renewals Increasingly Scooped Up by Crooks for Credit Card Stealing Purposes

The registrant of domain names with decent traffic who fail to renew them are proving quite costly for owners and others. more

Weekend Cyberattack on Pakistani bank reported to be a Historic $6 Million Loss, Bank Denies Claim

Karachi-based Bank Islami revealed Saturday morning that it had detected abnormal transactions resulting in 2.6 million Pakistani rupees, roughly $19,500 and precautionary steps where taken immediately. more

US Copyright Office Expands Security Researchers’ Ability to Hack Without Going to Jail

The Librarian of Congress and US Copyright Office has updated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act extending some essential exemptions ensuring that computer security researchers won't be treated like nefarious criminals for their contributions to society. more

Easy Access to ICANN, IP Address Data Beats Info on Encrypted Data, Says Telstra Cybersecurity Head

When it comes to fighting cybercrime, "being able to easily access ICANN and look up IP addresses is a lot more important than accessing the minutiae of encrypted data communications," says Jacqueline McNamara, head of cybersecurity at Telstra. more

DK Hostmaster Wins Award for Transparency and Trust Online

The nonprofit Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP Global) presented its annual Internet Pharmacy Safety E-Commerce Leadership Award to .DK Hostmaster at the 2018 ICANN63 today in Barcelona, Spain. The domain name administrator for Denmark, DK Hostmaster, was selected for the award based on their commitment to ensuring citizen safety by maintaining transparent WHOIS data, proactively enforcing identity accuracy policies to increase consumer trust and safety online. more

Continued Threats from Malware

As part of my job, I manage an incident response team that was engaged by a significant organization in Georgia whose network was infected by the QBOT (a.k.a. QAKBOT) malware. The customer had been infected for over a year, several teams before ours had failed to solve the problem, and they continued to get reinfected by the malware when they thought they had eradicated it. Over time it had spread to more than 1,000 computers in their ecosystem stealing user credentials along the way. more

Frequency of DDoS Attacks Risen by 40% While Duration of Attacks Decrease

The frequency of DDoS attacks has risen by 40% year on year while the duration of attacks decreased with 77% lasting ten minutes or less, according to a new report released by Corero Network Security. more

EU Authorities to Give Internet Companies 1 Hour to Take Down Extremist Content or Face Hefty Fines

European authorities proposed new laws today subjecting internet companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook to big fines if the extremist content is not taken down within one hour. more

British Airways Issues Apology for Cyberattack Affecting Hundreds of Thousands of Customers

British Airways issued an apology today after the credit card details of hundreds of thousands of its customers were stolen over a two-week period in the most serious attack on its website and app. more

Anti-Phishing Working Group Proposes Use of Secure Hashing to Address GDPR-Whois Debacle

The AntiPhishing Working Group (APWG) in a letter to ICANN has expressed concern that the redaction of the WHOIS data as defined by GDPR for all domains is "over-prescriptive". more

Doug Madory Reports on Shutting Down the BGP Hijack Factory

A lengthy email to the NANOG mailing list last month concerning suspicious routing activities of a company called Bitcanal initiated a concerted effort to kick a bad actor off the Internet. more