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Tax Extortion Emails Bring Major Threats
A new email
campaign has been spotted threatening ransomware and DDoS attacks
over fake tax documents allegedly held by the attackers if a Bitcoin ransom
isn’t paid. The campaign authors also threaten to send fake tax documents to
the IRS through a poorly-worded ransom email that even provides Wikipedia
excerpts for each threat put forward. Fortunately, as the campaign seems to be
focused on corporations rather than individuals, no payments have been made to
the attacker’s crypto coin wallet address.
Hotel Reservation Data Leaking Through Third-Party Services
As major data
breaches continue to flood headlines, a recent study has revealed
that nearly two of every three hotels exposes information about its guests to third-parties.
Excerpts of the data show names, social security numbers, and payment card
details that could give unauthorized users the ability to compromise identities
or make changes to current reservations. Most of the exposed data involves comping
through third-party services run on hotel websites offering customers
additional packages.
Ransomware Conspirator Jailed in the UK
Police in the UK have officially charged and jailed a man
for his part in the operation of a global
ransomware campaign with ties to a Russian criminal organization. Charges
range from fraud and blackmail to computer misuse relating to DDoS attacks and
the Essex man is set to face at least six years. By masquerading as an
advertising agent looking to purchase ad space on high-traffic sites, he was able
to infect ad links with malware and other exploits to spread his campaign.
Firefox Begins Blocking Cryptomining Scripts
Even after the demise of CoinHive, cryptomining
scripts are still being secretly deployed on thousands of websites
without the knowledge of their owners and visitors. With the release of Firefox
67 beta, Mozilla is hoping to completely protect their users from malicious
scripts that download and run cryptominers and other unwanted tracking software
by using a blacklist created by Disconnect, a VPN developer with a reputation for
privacy protection. Additionally, the new Firefox version will block
fingerprinting scripts commonly used to invade a user’s browsing privacy.
MyCar App Uses Hardcoded Credentials
Thousands of cars were left vulnerable after a widely used
vehicle telematics systems was found to be using hardcoded
credentials in their mobile apps. Used in dozens of different car
models to enable remote control functions, the hardcoded credentials leave these
vehicles accessible to anyone with the app’s source code and the plaintext
credentials within. Fortunately for users, the latest iOS and Android versions of
the MyCar app have been updated to resolve this vulnerability.
The post Cyber News Rundown: Tax Extortion Ransomware Scams Corporations appeared first on Webroot Blog.