Senate Fails to Delay Change to Rule 41 Hacking Powers
A final effort Wednesday by senators from both parties failed to gain passage of a bill that would have delayed a major change to expand the government’s power to use remote searches of computers. The modification of Rule 41 will go into effect Thursday at midnight. On Wednesday morning, both Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Steve […]
More Than a Million Android Devices Rooted by Gooligan Malware
A new version of an existing piece of malware has emerged in some third-party Android app stores and researchers say it has infected more than a million devices around the world, giving the attackers full access to victims’ Google accounts in the process. The malware campaign is known as Gooligan, and it’s a variant of […]
Assessing Phone Fraud in the Contact Center: The Growing Problem
Aite Group, an independent research and advisory firm focused on business, technology, and regulatory issues, interviewed 25 executives at 18 of the top 40 largest U.S. financial institutions based on asset size in order to provide an evaluation of the current state of fraud. New research proves that contact centers are being attacked more than […]
Phone Fraud Groups Now Offering Phone Fraud Protection Service
Fraudsters are always looking for new ways to empty the wallets of their victims, and scammers in the U.K. recently have hit on a novel phone fraud technique that preys on people’s fear of other phone fraud scams. The new tactic involves scammers calling up potential victims and offering them a subscription service that will […]
Cerber Ransomware Seen Using Tor
Ransomware authors have adopted a number of new tactics recently to help avoid detection and stop takedown attempts, and the latest move by the gang behind the Cerber malware is the use of both Google redirection and the Tor network as evasion and obfuscation mechanisms. Researchers from Cisco’s Talos group have come across a new version […]
Senators Say Government Failed to Answer Many Concerns on Rule 41
With three days before a change to a federal rule would alter the way that federal law enforcement agencies can seek warrants to search remote computers, members of Congress worried about the ramifications of the shift say they still are waiting for answers from the Department of Justice on how the new powers would be […]
On the Wire Podcast: Jessy Irwin
The last week or so has brought us a lot of emergency security and privacy advice, a lot of which hasn’t necessarily been great. So we decided to call Jessy Irwin and talk through what people can and should be doing to protect themselves, how threat models work, and how to talk to your family […]
178 Arrested in Huge Money Mule Crackdown
Law enforcement agencies from 17 countries, along with Europol, executed a major crackdown on money mules across Europe this week, arresting 178 people in connection with operations that resulted in losses of more than €23 million. The action included authorities from the UK, France, Germany, the United States, Romania, and many other countries, and is […]
Remotely Recording Conversations Through Headphones
As if attackers didn’t have enough methods for observing users’ actions, researchers have now developed a technique that allows them to use speakers or headphones plugged in to a PC as microphones to record victims’ discussions. The attack involves a technique called re-tasking in which the researchers changed the functionality of the audio jacks on a […]