Daily deal website LivingSocial suffered a data breach compromising emails, passwords and more information for most of the site’s users resulting in the site requiring user’s to reset their passwords. Read More
Study Finds Facebook ‘Likes’ Can be Used to Determine Demographic and Personal Information
While many social media users have become more aware of privacy issues and have made their profiles private, a recent academic study has found that what people ‘Like’ on Facebook can tell a lot about them. Unlike profile information, Facebook ‘Likes’ are less likely to be made private and are then publicly visible to everyone.
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FBI Charges Creators and Distributor of Gozi Malware
Three sophisticated fraudsters behind the malware Gozi, which infected over one million computers including hundreds at NASA, have been arrested and charged with computer intrusion and conspiracy to commit bank fraud after creating and selling their malware to steal bank account credentials online in the black market. Read More
Fraudsters Target New Zealand Auction Site to Recruit Money Mules
Fraud rings have been trying to increase their membership as they have targeted users of the New Zealand auction website Trade Me with a multi-step scam, taking over sellers’ accounts and using them to recruit money mules. Read More
Fraudsters Copy Legitimate Microsoft Email Days Later in Phishing Scam
Phishing scams can often be convincing, and a recent case of a phishing campaign emulating a legitimate Microsoft email about changes to their Services Agreements just days after the real emails were sent out underscores how quick fraudsters are able to adapt and capitalize on opportunities to deceive consumers. Read More
Study Shows Phishing Could Evolve to Target Brainwave Activity
Advancements in technology over recent years have made EEG headsets, which read and interpret brain activity into controlling software applications, available to consumers. A recent academic study examined exploiting such technology to obtain personal and financial information by attacking victims while wearing these headsets, and yielded surprising results that showed fraudsters could exploit such technologies
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Spammers Scrape Facebook Friends for Targeted Phishing Attacks
Facebook recently announced that they uncovered an incident where fraudsters used compromised email addresses to scrape lists of Facebook friends due to a misconfiguration on their site. The fraudsters would then target phishing emails to the owners of the email addresses purporting to be from a Facebook friend. Read More
Phishing Responsible for $687M in Global Losses for First Half of 2012
According to a recent report from security firm RSA, phishing attacks in the first half of 2012 have accounted for more than $687 million in losses while the country hosting the most phishing and pharming sites is by far the United States. Read More
Financial Institutions Buy Top-Level Domains to Combat Phishing and Pharming
Major financial institutions have invested millions in new top-level domains that will be exclusive to their brand while financial industry groups apply for oversight of the top-level domain .bank in attempts to combat phishing by using exclusive, secure and trusted domains for their customer websites and services. Read More
Text Message Scams Target Consumers Regionally and Nationwide
Just as fraudsters send email phishing scams they also try to elicit payment information through text message scams, a practice referred to as SMiShing. These scams continue to target consumers en masse imitating well-known and established brands, but recent attacks have also targeted specific regions impersonating local credit unions and financial institutions. Read More
