Overall it was a slow news week - if you only seek news related to crime, security, and intelligence. Politics ruled the day and everything else was relegated secondary. My intent to is keep this newsletter apolitical, or at least as much as it can be. I know, everything is political now, but the intent of this newsletter is to discuss things that interest those of is who secure things and investigate things.
Phishing Smishing
This Vice article warns that phishing attacks through SMS text message, or “smishing” are on the rise. Yes. and exactly for the reason the article points out…they work. The attack catches people off guard. They have been socialized to expect spam through email but receiving a text message is something more personal. “They had my phone number!”.
Pennsylvania County falls victim
Delaware County, Pennsylvania was stricken with ransomware and ended up paying the ransom. The attack was delivered through a phishing email. That one click resulted in the County not only paying an insurance deductible but also a $254,400 payment to Kroll for clean-up and remediation. I wonder if the employee ever received proper security training or any security training at all? Training is always less expensive than incident response!
Ransomware is big business
Intel firms Advanced Intelligence and HYAS examined the Bitcoin wallets known to be associated with the ransomware Ryuk and believe they have profited at least 150 Million Dollars during their reign of terror. Of particular interest is the group is using the Binance and Huobi crypto-exchanges. The actual blog post by Advanced Intelligence can be read here.
Know Yourself
Drago’s introduced the OSINT Collection Risk Framework and advocates research your own entities to learn what adversaries can find and how it can be used against you. This is following the new push for security intelligence and being more aware of your risks and vulnerabilities. Don’t be caught off guard…know yourself.
Victim Care
This Psychology Today article details the stress fraud victims face in the aftermath of the event. The stress and hurt felt once they realize they have been taken advantage of and sustained a financial loss. This is something financial crime investigators know all too well and in many cases we invest more time on victim care than trying to identify the bad guy.
The Rest…
As a holder of the Stellar Lumen cryptocurrency, I was intrigued to read about this phishing campaign that specifically targeted those who posses the altcoins. The price has been in the basement for the past year and is currently trading at 29 cents per coin. Who want’s to go through the effort to steal that? Of course, maybe the attackers know something? Time to buy some more lumens!
A twenty-three year-old man pled guilty to federal charges related to identity theft and wire fraud in the District of Massachusetts. The man used bitcoin to purchase identities which he then used to commit account fraud. The gem of the story though is that he was creating phony vendor e-commerce shops to cash out compromised credit cards and gift cards.
In this Middle-District of Pennsylvania case a Romanian nation pled guilty to a card cash out scheme in the Scranton area.
Colorado officials lament that pandemic unemployment assistance (PUA) fraud is rampant and they are struggling to get it under control. Yes. Welcome to the game.
Cool Tool
GetFVid is a Facebook video download tool. As always run any downloaded file through Virustotal before opening it or uploading it to your network.
And finally
The Consumer Electronic Show - CES 2021 - is this week. The largest trade show detailing all new technology from TV’s to computers to phones will be convened virtually. Which is probably fitting, but not nearly as cool as being able to see and handle the devices in person. CNET usually covers the show well.
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