Google and industry partners have dismantled the XCPE malware botnet consisting of more than 1.3 million Android TV streaming TV boxes that Google says its manufacturer intentionally infected with malware to generate revenue through cybercrime activities. [...]
Google US
Introduction Last week, Google and industry partners dismantled the XCPE backdoor which enrolled more than 1.3 million set-top boxes into a botnet. We assess with high confidence that the backdoor and botnet were intentionally developed, deployed, and operated for financial gain by Videostrong Technology Co., an Android Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and Original Device Manufacturer (ODM). Videostrong monetized the backdoor by selling access to criminal affiliates and loading those…
The FBI and U.S. Secret Service alleged this weekend that North Korean hackers were responsible for stealing more than $6.3 billion from cryptocurrency platform Binance last week.
The FBI has confirmed that North Korean state-sponsored hackers known as TraderTraitor were behind the $6.3 billion crypto-theft attack on Binance, making it the largest cryptocurrency heist on record. [...]
Ahmad Umar Agha, known online as “Th3Pr0,” was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Virginia to 42 months behind bars for his role in a conspiracy that was organized by former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's closest advisers.
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U.S. law enforcement has seized the primary domain of Virtualine, a bulletproof hosting service advertised on cybercrime forums for facilitating illegal activities. [...]
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The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Russian and North Korean nationals for allegedly laundering the earnings of illicit IT workers on behalf of Pyongyang.
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The FBI seized the domain of a “bulletproof” hosting provider accused of facilitating a range of cybercrimes, including money laundering and the distribution of child sexual abuse material.
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A Ukrainian national was sentenced to 70 months in prison for his role in ransomware attacks targeting hospitals, government entities, and high-revenue businesses worldwide between 2018 and 2021. [...]
Ukrainian national Artem Stryzhak, 36, had pleaded guilty last year to charges related to participating in at least two well-known ransomware groups.
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DOJ action against five foreign nationals — plus a sting in Madagascar — highlight the expanding global reach of the scam center industry.
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A reverse engineer claims that their Samsung smart TV has been collecting audio without their consent. The researcher, who calls themselves “log4j,” said in an X thread that their 2025 Samsung TV was delivering ads that seemed suspiciously relevant to them. Investigating, they claim to have found a package called “always on voice,” which uses the TV’s built-in microphone to collect sounds from the room. The software logged events such as dogs barking and babies crying, log4j said, adding that…
Samsung US
South Korean police identified seven suspects linked to a cybercrime operation that breached more than 90 organizations in the country, with ARTEX AI pentesting framework used in most of the attacks. [...]
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44-year-old Zheng Zhao was allegedly a key money-launderer working with a group of scammers who called U.S.-based victims and urged them to invest in fictitious businesses.
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A Chinese national was arraigned in California after being extradited from the Netherlands for his alleged involvement in a cryptocurrency investment scam that stole nearly $37 million from 174 victims in the United States. [...]
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Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal may feel like very old news. But the consequences are still arriving, and the latest comes with a $25 billion price tag. Reuters reports that a New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in civil penalties after a jury found that Facebook misled consumers about its data practices and its handling of hate speech and misinformation. Meta says it expects to win on appeal. This case is about more than information ending up in the wrong hands. It…
More than 1,400 suspected cybercriminals were arrested across Africa this summer as part of a crackdown on the gangs perpetrating online fraud, ransomware and business email compromise attacks, Interpol said.
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A Cash App account opened in her name has left Amanda Smith facing criminal charges and potentially up to six years in prison. 404 Media reports that Smith says someone used her Social Security number (SSN) and date of birth to create an account that received money from a Facebook Marketplace scam. Allegedly, a buyer sent $1,000 for items that weren’t really for sale. A scammer had taken over someone else’s Facebook account and directed the buyer to pay a Cash App account in Smith’s name.…
Two Chicago customers say robots delivering their groceries and takeout scanned their faces and hands without consent, stored the data alongside their names and addresses, and used the recordings to train AI. Their separate lawsuits accuse delivery robot operators Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics of violating Illinois’ biometric privacy law. Both companies dispute the claims. The plaintiffs filed the cases in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, alleging that the robots used their…
Law enforcement agencies have disrupted nearly 11,000 cybercriminal networks and arrested more than 1,400 people in Operation Serengeti III, which targeted business email compromise, ransomware, and online scams. [...]
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A Nigerian national who worked with a group to hack tax prep businesses and conduct millions of dollars in fraud using customer data was sentenced this week.
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A Nigerian national was sentenced to eight years in prison for his involvement in a series of spearphishing attacks targeting US tax preparation businesses since 2019. [...]
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Russian authorities have reportedly detained three suspected members of the DataSuckers hacking group following a cyberattack on a popular restaurant chain that exposed vast amounts of customer information.
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OpenAI is facing separate legal challenges over how ChatGPT interacts with children. The Guardian reports that eight US states accuse the company of misleading parents about the chatbot’s safety and exposing vulnerable users to dangerous conversations. Separately, CNET reports that a mother suing on behalf of her two children alleges that OpenAI collected and used children’s sensitive personal information without valid parental consent. The cases raise serious questions about what happens when…
OpenAI US
Law enforcement authorities from 17 countries in Latin America and Europe have arrested 95 suspects in an INTERPOL-coordinated operation targeting the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) through online messaging groups. [...]
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a complaint accusing Digital Forensics Corporation of exploiting people already targeted by sextortionists. We have talked about sextortion and recovery scams in the past, but we never looked specifically at the combination. Apparently, there is a lot of money to be made for those ruthless enough to take money from victims already in a state of panic. The FTC has accused Digital Forensics Corporation, its owner Dmitry Belkin, and affiliated companies…
A raid on a home in a North Macedonian village led to the arrest of the suspected administrator of the OLVX market, according to the Balkan country's Interior Ministry along with the FBI.
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Russian-speaking Brooklyn residents began tipping off local authorities to a cryptocurrency fraud scheme three years ago, leading to an operation to take down the associated servers and domains.
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The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has disrupted the Famous Chollima threat group's operations by arresting two suspects, charging 14 individuals, and seizing nearly 187 laptops used in North Korean remote IT worker schemes. [...]
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The tech giant worked with Japan’s National Police Agency and healthcare cybersecurity organization Health-ISAC to obtain a U.S. court order seizing and redirecting domains that were part of the infrastructure underlying YAM Store, CoGUI and Iron Man.
A massive cybercriminal ecosystem facilitating more than a billion malicious messages targeting over 75,000 organizations across 150 countries has been disrupted by law enforcement agencies and partners worldwide. [...]
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In this article Uncovering the shadow world of a phishing kit ecosystem Storm-3119: YAM Store, the power broker Storm-2990: The Iron Man System phishing kit Downstream activity from Storm-2990 phishing kits Mitigation and protection guidance Microsoft Defender detections Over the past year, Microsoft uncovered a Chinese-language cybercriminal ecosystem, an interconnected network of phishing kit operators, developers, and an illicit marketplace selling tools and infrastructure for large-scale…
The Joint Economic Committee on Tuesday released the results of a year-long investigation into Tinder, Hinge, Match, Plenty of Fish and several other dating sites owned by Match Group.
Match Group US
A Saudi OpenAI engineer has been arrested for allegedly planting a hidden recording device in an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco offices to secretly record sensitive conversations. [...]
OpenAI US
More than 40 residences in Texas were the target of a federal operation in September to clamp down on remote worker scams that feed money back to the North Korean regime.
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More than two dozen people were arrested by police in Ghana and Nigeria as part of a U.K.-hosted operation that also included tech companies.
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Norway’s privacy regulator Datatilsynet has fined advertising technology company Xandr 92 million Norwegian kroner, approximately $9.6 million, for unlawfully processing and sharing sensitive information about Grindr users. While the decision concerns users in Norway, the data-sharing practices were not confined to Norwegian users. BleepingComputer reports that information about Grindr users in other countries was also exposed through the advertising system. Between July 2018 and April 2020,…
Norway's Data Protection Authority (Datatilsynet) has fined Microsoft-owned advertising company Xandr NOK 92 million ($9.6M) for unlawfully processing and sharing sensitive data belonging to Grindr users in the country. [...]
Canadian cybersecurity executive Edward Dubrovsky has been arrested in Pennsylvania in connection with alleged extortion activity that multiple reports have linked to the FBI's ongoing crackdown on the ShinyHunters hacking group. [...]
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Japan’s National Police Agency confirmed the arrest and extradition to Germany of a Russian national accused of being involved in the Qilin ransomware gang.
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The FBI has arrested another suspected member of the ShinyHunters extortion group believed to be involved in the recent breach of FBI systems, Director Kash Patel announced Friday. [...]
Oleg Korniev, a 42-year-old dual citizen of Ukraine and Russia, was a principal of Your Mule Cashout, or “YMCO,” which from 2007 until 2014 set up a sophisticated network of mules in the U.S. and Europe.
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“We will continue to work closely with our partners to disrupt what’s left of the ShinyHunters group and their associates, no matter where they operate," FBI Director Kash Patel said.
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Germany has arrested a Russian national suspected of being a leading member of the Qilin ransomware group following extradition from Japan earlier this month. [...]
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A Ukrainian-Russian dual citizen has pleaded guilty to running a massive money laundering operation that laundered millions for cybercriminals worldwide. [...]
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Raheim Hamilton, 30, pleaded guilty earlier this year to a drug conspiracy charge and agreed to forfeit more than $100 million worth of Bitcoin and several properties in Virginia.
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The FBI has seized seven domains used by Chinese state-sponsored hackers known as Flax Typhoon to operate two hacking tools, MicroScan and FishHub, used in attacks that breached critical infrastructure and other organizations worldwide. [...]
KEV ✓ · ransomware EPSS 1.00 CVE-2014-6278 CVE-2015-3306 CVE-2015-5477 CVE-2016-3081 CVE-2019-11510 CVE-2021-22205 CVE-2021-3199 CVE-2023-22894 Microsoft veřejná správa výroba a průmysl zdravotnictví školství US
The owner of a ransomware recovery firm was hit with wire fraud charges for allegedly making secret ransom payments while overcharging the victims of attacks.
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A 25-year-old man who helped steal nearly $260,000 in cryptocurrency through a SIM-swapping fraud scheme was sentenced to two and a half years in prison at a London court.
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A Maryland man was found guilty of stealing more than $53 million after hacking the decentralized crypto exchange Uranium Finance twice in April 2021. [...]
The co-creator of Empire Market, one of the largest dark web marketplaces before its shutdown, has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for facilitating $430 million in illegal transactions from 2018 to 2020. [...]
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The owner of ransomware remediation company MonsterCloud has been charged with allegedly defrauding ransomware victims by secretly paying their attackers for decryptors while claiming to use proprietary technology to recover encrypted data. [...]
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U.S. officials say Zhang Yu was a prominent figure in the Hafnium campaign, which saw hackers breach thousands of computers and steal troves of documents.
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A North Carolina musician was sentenced to 18 months in prison for collecting more than $10 million in royalties from Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music in a massive streaming royalty fraud scheme. [...]
The net is tightening around the Shiny Hunters cybercrime group following the reported arrest of a second member. On Saturday, Reuters said that 16 year-old Saif al-Din Khader had been arrested in Jordan and was in FBI custody. This follows the arrest earlier in September of another member in the Netherlands. Third party reports named him as 24 year-old Pepijn van der Stap, an offensive security lead at Dutch company Neo Security. The FBI posted a message following the Dutch arrest warning…
Aguirre was added to the FBI’s “Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives” list in March, becoming the first cybercriminal added to the list.
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A former core infrastructure engineer at an industrial company headquartered in New Jersey was sentenced to 32 months in prison for locking thousands of devices on his employer's network in a ransomware-style attack. [...]
Saif al-Din Khader is cooperating with the FBI, reports said, as the bureau responds to a massive breach that exposed employee data.
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Italy's Data Protection Authority (GPDP) has fined IQVIA €7 million ($7.8M) over poor data-processing practices that the agency says could have put roughly one million patients at risk of data exposure and de-anonymization. [...]