IRS To Ditch Biometric Requirement for Online Access

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2022 20:56:52 +0000

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said today it will be transitioning away from requiring biometric data from taxpayers who wish to access their records at the agency’s website. The reversal comes as privacy experts and lawmakers have been pushing the IRS and other federal agencies to find less intrusive methods for validating one’s identity with the U.S. government online.

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How Phishers Are Slinking Their Links Into LinkedIn

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2022 18:49:38 +0000

If you received a link to LinkedIn.com via email, SMS or instant message, would you click it? Spammers, phishers and other ne’er-do-wells are hoping you will, because they’ve long taken advantage of a marketing feature on the business networking site which lets them create a LinkedIn.com link that bounces your browser to other websites, such as phishing pages that mimic top online brands (but chiefly Linkedin’s parent firm Microsoft).

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Fake Investor John Bernard Sinks Norwegian Green Shipping Dreams

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2022 18:05:52 +0000

Several articles here have delved into the history of John Bernard, the pseudonym used by a fake billionaire technology investor who’s tricked dozens of start-ups into giving him tens of millions of dollars. Bernard’s latest victim — a Norwegian startup hoping to build a fleet of environmentally friendly shipping vessels — is now embroiled in a lawsuit over a deal gone bad, in which Bernard falsely claimed to have secured $100 million from six other wealthy investors, including the founder of Uber and the artist Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, better known as The Weeknd.

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Who Wrote the ALPHV/BlackCat Ransomware Strain?

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2022 13:18:36 +0000

In December 2021, researchers discovered a new ransomware-as-a-service named ALPHV (a.k.a. “BlackCat”), considered to be the first professional cybercrime group to create and use a ransomware strain in the Rust programming language. In this post, we’ll explore some of the clues left behind by the developer who was reputedly hired to code the ransomware variant.

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Scary Fraud Ensues When ID Theft & Usury Collide

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2022 19:48:40 +0000

What’s worse than finding out that identity thieves took out a 546 percent interest payday loan in your name? How about a 900 percent interest loan? Or how about not learning of the fraudulent loan until it gets handed off to collection agents? One reader’s nightmare experience spotlights what can happen when ID thieves and hackers start targeting online payday lenders.

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Crime Shop Sells Hacked Logins to Other Crime Shops

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2022 17:11:36 +0000

Up for the “Most Meta Cybercrime Offering” award this year is Accountz Club, a new cybercrime store that sells access to purloined accounts at services built for cybercriminals, including shops peddling stolen payment cards and identities, spamming tools, email and phone bombing services, and those selling authentication cookies for a slew of popular websites.

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IRS Will Soon Require Selfies for Online Access

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2022 17:15:06 +0000

If you created an online account to manage your tax records with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), those login credentials will cease to work later this year. The agency says that by the summer of 2022, the only way to log in to irs.gov will be through ID.me, an online identity verification service that requires applicants to submit copies of bills and identity documents, as well as a live video feed of their faces via a mobile device.

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500M Avira Antivirus Users Introduced to Cryptomining

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2022 18:05:14 +0000

Many readers were surprised to learn recently that the popular Norton 360 antivirus suite now ships with a program which lets customers make money mining virtual currency. But Norton 360 isn’t alone in this dubious endeavor: Avira antivirus — which has built a base of 500 million users worldwide largely by making the product free — was recently bought by the same company that owns Norton 360 and is introducing its customers to a service called Avira Crypto.

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Norton 360 Now Comes With a Cryptominer

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2022 17:26:10 +0000

Norton 360, one of the most popular antivirus products on the market today, has installed a cryptocurrency mining program on its customers’ computers. Norton’s parent firm says the cloud-based service that activates the program and enables customers to profit from the scheme — in which the company keeps 15 percent of any currencies mined — is “opt-in,” meaning users have to agree to enable it. But many Norton users complain the mining program is difficult to remove, and reactions from longtime customers have ranged from unease and disbelief to, “Dude, where’s my crypto?”

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Coronavirus Widens the Money Mule Pool

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2020 22:11:46 +0000

With many people being laid off or working from home thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, cybercrooks are almost certain to have more than their usual share of recruitable “money mules” — people who get roped into money laundering schemes under the pretense of a work-at-home job offer. Here’s the story of one upstart mule factory that spoofs a major nonprofit and tells new employees they’ll be collecting and transmitting donations for an international “Coronavirus Relief Fund.”

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