Threats Without Borders - Issue 68
Threats Without Borders - Issue 68
Matt's Newsletter - Week ending March 6, 2022
In issue 66, I introduced a two-part series detailing my personal tech-stack.
Part 1 detailed the hardware that I use every day. You can read it here.
Part 2 is a listing of the services, applications, and extensions that I use to increase my productivity and make my life easier. Well, sometimes it makes things harder. Does anyone want to guess how much time I've spent trying to find the perfect to-do list app? (Cue the hysterical laughter of the hardcore pen and paper adherents).
https://write.as/mattdotts/personal-tech-stack-part-2
NYT calls out Zelle
This New York Times article calls out payment service Zelle for its facilitation of fraudulent payments. I’d offer that this article could easily be headlined about Venmo, Cash App, Paypal, or Remitly, so it probably isn’t fair to Zelle - but they are the largest of the services and are responsible for a significant amount of fraudulent transactions. The author exposed the dirty-parts fairly well: Banks say that returning money to defrauded customers is not their responsibility, since the federal law covering electronic transfers — known in the industry as Regulation E — requires them to cover only “unauthorized” transactions, and the fairly common scam that Mr. Faunce fell prey to tricks people into making the transfers themselves. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/business/payments-fraud-zelle-banks.html
SEC vs. NFT
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is scrutinizing creators of NFTs and the crypto exchanges where they trade to determine if some of the assets violate the agency’s rules. The agency is examining so-called fractional NFTs, which involve breaking down the assets into units that can be easily bought and sold. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-02/sec-scrutinizes-nft-market-over-illegal-crypto-token-offerings
Mail fraud ring broken
Pennsylvania police have uncovered a massive mail fraud ring that stole checks, cash and gift cards. The case exposed thieves working in roughly 39 jurisdictions, including some out of state. The group broke into outdoor postal boxes and stole the envelopes containing credit cards, checks and gift cards. Kudos to the investigators at the Tredyffrin Township Police for following through and busting up this group. https://6abc.com/tredyffrin-township-pa-mail-fraud-ring-stolen-checks-post-office-bruno-nyanue-zidane-gallimore/11618420/
Individuals make corporations
Attorney General Merrick Garland has made the investigation and prosecution of corporate crime one of his top priorities. He correctly explains that corporations are run by individuals and to tackle crimes committed by the corporation as a whole you have to address the individuals who made the decisions that lead to the criminal offense. The agency is allocating resources toward "obtaining individual convictions rather than accepting big-dollar corporate resolutions”, Garland said at the American Bar Institute's National Institute on White Collar Crime. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/prosecuting-individuals-is-top-priority-policing-corporate-crime-us-attorney-2022-03-03/
The rest…
Former Chief Lending Officer of First Keystone Community Bank charged for obtaining $690,000 in fraudulent loans. https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdpa/pr/berwick-bank-officer-charged-false-loan-applications
The US Senate approved new cybersecurity legislation that will force critical infrastructure organizations to report cyberattacks to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within 72 hours and ransomware payments within 24 hours. The bill now moves to the House for approval. https://www.zdnet.com/article/senate-passes-cybersecurity-act-forcing-critical-infrastructure-orgs-to-report-cyberattacks-ransom-payments/
A Pennsylvania couple stole their neighbors mail and used the information to open credit card accounts. https://www.pennlive.com/news/2022/03/pa-couple-who-created-fake-credit-cards-with-data-from-stolen-mail-sentenced-to-prison.html
Scammers are exploiting the war in Ukraine by pretending to be the Red Cross in an effort to obtain digital currency. https://isc.sans.edu/forums/diary/Scam+EMail+Impersonating+Red+Cross/28404
Cool Job
Senior Manager - Law Enforcement and Incident Response: Lime
Cool Tools
Not really a tool but educational: Spot the Russian Troll - https://medium.com/dfrlab/trolltracker-how-to-spot-russian-trolls-2f6d3d287eaa
*Advanced Skills* : Subfinder - subdomain discovery tool. Extremely useful for investigating suspicious/malicious websites. https://github.com/projectdiscovery/subfinder
Irrelevant
Beehive theft. Who would have thunk? https://www.kivitv.com/news/national/thieves-are-targeting-beekeeping-equipment-and-the-costs-could-get-passed-on-to-the-environment
Homophones are hard
Indite: To write or compose. To set in writing.
Indict: To accuse of wrongdoing.
Thanks for opening this weeks email. My goal was to gain five new subscribers over the last week. I gained zero and lost two. Who knows.
See you next Tuesday.
Matt
“MAKE FRIENDS WHO FORCE YOU TO LEVEL UP.” - someone with better friends than me.
