eastern-europe
FDIC to Banks: Watch for ‘Money Mules’ Duped by Hackers
Bank customers are increasingly being duped into acting as “money mules” for hackers, unwittingly laundering cash stolen from business bank accounts, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation warned the nation’s financial institutions on Thursday. Using specialized Trojan horse malware , cyber crooks have been intercepting web banking credentials from the computers of small and midsized businesses, and then initiating wire transfers to mules around the country. The mules are consumers who’ve been lured into fake work-at-home scams, in which their employment involves receiving money transfers and then forwarding the funds to Eastern Europe, directly or through other mules.
Continue reading »New ATM Malware Captures PINs and Cash
Security researchers have found malware planted on ATMs in Eastern Europe that captures PINs and magnetic stripe data from the machine’s memory and instructs the machines to spit out cash, eliminating the need for primitive skimming devices and advancing the tradecraft of card thieves to a new level. “This malware is unlike any we have ever had experience with,” said Nick Percoco in a statement. Percoco is vice president and head of Trustwave’s SpiderLabs, which was called in to investigate the matter this last spring.
Continue reading »Feds Shutter ‘Black Hat’ ISP
For the first time, the Federal Trade Commission is shuttering an internet service provider it alleges, “recruits, knowingly hosts, and actively participates in the distribution of illegal, malicious and harmful electronic content” such as botnets and child porn. The company, doing business as 3fn.net and APS Telecom, “actively recruited” to its hosting service thousands of “rouge” and “black hat” web sites distributing “illegal, malicious, and harmful electronic content including child pornography, spyware, viruses, trojan horses, phishing, botnet command and control servers, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest. ” A San Jose, California federal judge, responding to the FTC’s lawsuit, has ordered (.pdf) upstream internet providers and data centers to stop servicing the company, also known as Pricewert , which is based in Oregon.
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