Leveraging Knowledge to Manage Your Data Risks
In an action against what has been described as one of the largest hacker forums in the world, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on April 12, 2022, that it has taken down RaidForums’ website and arrested its founder/administrator. According to DOJ, the domains seized were “Raidforums.com,” “Rf.ws,” and “Raid.lol.”
In its announcement,…
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) unsealed indictments against four Russian government officials on March 24, 2022, alleging that they hacked into networks that controlled energy systems in the U.S.
According to the DOJ, the attacks took place between 2012 and 2018, and included physical damage to infrastructure, as well as embedding malware for later…
People always ask me if law enforcement is having any luck in combatting cyber criminals. Let me be clear: it is a very tough job to take down cyber criminals located in other countries or sponsored by foreign nations. Our government is focusing on cyber criminals more than I have ever seen before, and the…
In an unusual and exciting twist to the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced this week that it was able to retrieve $2.3 million of the $4.4 million paid by Colonial Pipeline to DarkSide by seizing the wallet, and thus “preventing Darkside actors from using it.”
Way to go DOJ and…
It has been reported by Bloomberg Law that the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack was caused by a “single compromised password.” The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack had consumers hoarding gasoline and disrupted distribution of gas along the east coast. One single compromised password.
Colonial Pipeline paid $4.4 million in ransom following the attack, although the Department…
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts is warning small businesses that received loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) of a dramatic increase in reports of business email-compromise schemes related to the program. Scammers are using information about PPP recipients posted by the Small Business Administration (SBA) to impersonate PPP lenders requesting…
It has been widely reported that hackers are taking advantage of the pandemic to perpetrate scams and frauds. We have seen attacks against workers of companies through phishing emails that include an attachment or link offering information or access to specialized treatment for COVID-19 to lure people to click on them. Once they click on…
The Department of Justice recently indicted four men—two of whom are located in Canada and two in New York—for a mass-mailing scheme that bilked thousands of senior citizens out of tens of millions of dollars.
According to the indictments, the accused Canadian fraudsters sent mail to thousands of elderly individuals whose names and addresses they…
Last week, authorities from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada accused a well-known hacker group tied to the Russian government, APT29 a/k/a Cozy Bear of using malware to exploit security vulnerabilities to enable it to steal COVID-19 vaccine research from companies located in these countries working to develop a vaccine. This was after a…
In the Federal Reserve’s July 11, 2019 White Paper, “Synthetic Identity Fraud in the U.S. Payment System, A Review of Causes and Contributing Factors,” the authors conclude that synthetic identity fraud is a serious and growing problem for the U.S. payments ecosystem that can only be addressed by a collaborative effort among all payments…
