Script kiddies are not hackers.
You can't purchase or download "hack". It comes from within.
See The Jargon File.
Or perhaps the laterday http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1392
EOF
Certain underground hacking forums are acting as training academies and tech-support networks for cybercriminals as well as creating a marketplace for a vast array of cybercrime tools, say researchers. Database security firm Imperva has been keeping close tabs on an unnamed hacking message board with nearly 220,000 registered …
Very sensible of Imperva to keep an eye on hacking forums. What is surprising is the following quote :
"Hacker forums are still not well understood by many in the security community..."
Why not? Anyone who purports to be a security professional must know that it is important to understand the motivation and capability of the potential threat actors, and should be keeping an eye on such forums (and maybe subscribing to such periodicals as "2600").
Any who don't are little better than double-glazing salesmen.
Is no one upset at the inappropriate use of the term 'hacker' anymore? Not even by IT security firms and IT news sites?
To paraphrase a martial arts movie, talking about martial arts skill - "An astronomer can be a hacker with his relentless pursuit of knowledge, constantly peering at the stars. A unix guru can be a hacker with his thirst for knowing more about his system of choice, a student can be a hacker by constantly teaching himself new things at a level most people do not bother going to."
Persons with malicious intent or script kiddies et al. - hackers, they are not.
I had my first PC that connected to the internet with 56k modem 8Mb ATI card on a Pentium 133 in '96. I discovered it not long after I got on the internet. Maybe within a few hours?
Don't tell me those guys only found out recently. Lulz.
It used to be more rampant mind you with hackers freely distributing guides as well as hacking tools without the nasty trojans infested malware you get today.
The choppy waters continue at OpenSea, whose security boss this week disclosed the NFT marketplace suffered an insider attack that could lead to hundreds of thousands of people fending off phishing attempts.
An employee of OpenSea's email delivery vendor Customer.io "misused" their access to download and share OpenSea users' and newsletter subscribers' email addresses "with an unauthorized external party," Head of Security Cory Hardman warned on Wednesday.
"If you have shared your email with OpenSea in the past, you should assume you were impacted," Hardman continued.
A former Canadian government employee has pleaded guilty in a US court to several charges related to his involvement with the NetWalker ransomware gang.
On Tuesday, 34-year-old Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins admitted he conspired to commit computer and wire fraud, intentionally damaged a protected computer, and transmitted a demand in relation to damaging a protected computer.
He will also forfeit $21.5 million and 21 laptops, mobile phones, gaming consoles, and other devices, according to his plea agreement [PDF], which described Vachon-Desjardins as "one of the most prolific NetWalker Ransomware affiliates" responsible for extorting said millions of dollars from dozens of companies worldwide.
America's Federal Trade Commission has sued Walmart, claiming it turned a blind eye to fraudsters using its money transfer services to con folks out of "hundreds of millions of dollars."
In a lawsuit [PDF] filed Tuesday, the regulator claimed the superstore giant is "well aware" of telemarketing fraudsters and other scammers convincing victims to part with their hard-earned cash via its services, with the money being funneled to domestic and international crime rings.
Walmart is accused of allowing these fraudulent money transfers to continue, failing to warn people to be on their guard, and failing to adopt policies and train employees on how to prevent these types of hustles.
The FTC is warning members of the LGBTQ+ community about online extortion via dating apps such as Grindr and Feeld.
According to the American watchdog, a common scam involves a fraudster posing as a potential romantic partner on one of the apps. The cybercriminal sends explicit of a stranger photos while posing as them, and asks for similar ones in return from the mark. If the victim sends photos, the extortionist demands a payment – usually in the form of gift cards – or threatens to share the photos on the chat to the victim's family members, friends, or employer.
Such sextortion scams have been going on for years in one form or another, even attempting to hit Reg hacks, and has led to suicides.
Spyware developed by Italian firm RCS Labs was used to target cellphones in Italy and Kazakhstan — in some cases with an assist from the victims' cellular network providers, according to Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG).
RCS Labs customers include law-enforcement agencies worldwide, according to the vendor's website. It's one of more than 30 outfits Google researchers are tracking that sell exploits or surveillance capabilities to government-backed groups. And we're told this particular spyware runs on both iOS and Android phones.
We understand this particular campaign of espionage involving RCS's spyware was documented last week by Lookout, which dubbed the toolkit "Hermit." We're told it is potentially capable of spying on the victims' chat apps, camera and microphone, contacts book and calendars, browser, and clipboard, and beam that info back to base. It's said that Italian authorities have used this tool in tackling corruption cases, and the Kazakh government has had its hands on it, too.
NSO Group told European lawmakers this week that "under 50" customers use its notorious Pegasus spyware, though these customers include "more than five" European Union member states.
The surveillance-ware maker's General Counsel Chaim Gelfand refused to answer specific questions about the company's customers during a European Parliament committee meeting on Thursday.
Instead, he frequently repeated the company line that NSO exclusively sells its spyware to government agencies — not private companies or individuals — and only "for the purpose of preventing and investigating terrorism and other serious crimes."
Europol cops have arrested nine suspected members of a cybercrime ring involved in phishing, internet scams, and money laundering.
The alleged crooks are believed to have stolen "several million euros" from at least "dozens of Belgian victims," according to that nation's police, which, along with the Dutch, supported the cross-border operation.
On Tuesday, after searching 24 houses in the Netherlands, officers cuffed eight men between the ages of 25 and 36 from Amsterdam, Almere, Rotterdam, and Spijkenisse, and a 25-year-old woman from Deventer. We're told the cops seized, among other things, a firearm, designer clothing, expensive watches, and tens of thousands of euros.
Updated A former Seattle tech worker has been convicted of wire fraud and computer intrusions in a US federal district court.
The conviction follows the infamous 2019 hack of Capital One in which personal information of more than 100 million US and Canadian credit card applicants were swiped from the financial giant's misconfigured cloud-based storage.
Paige Thompson (aka "erratic") was arrested in July 2019 after data was leaked between March and July of that year. The data was submitted by credit card hopefuls between 2005 and early 2019, and Thompson was able to get into Capital One's AWS storage thanks to a "misconfigured web application firewall."
A US task force aims to prevent online harassment and abuse, with a specific focus on protecting women, girls and LGBTQI+ individuals.
In the next 180 days, the White House Task Force to Address Online Harassment and Abuse will, among other things, draft a blueprint on a "whole-of-government approach" to stopping "technology-facilitated, gender-based violence."
A year after submitting the blueprint, the group will provide additional recommendations that federal and state agencies, service providers, technology companies, schools and other organisations should take to prevent online harassment, which VP Kamala Harris noted often spills over into physical violence, including self-harm and suicide for victims of cyberstalking as well mass shootings.
Law enforcement agencies around the world have arrested about 2,000 people and seized $50 million in a sweeping operation crackdown of social engineering and other scam operations around the globe.
In the latest action in the ongoing "First Light", an operation Interpol has coordinated annually since 2014, law enforcement officials from 76 countries raided 1,770 call centers suspected of running fraudulent operations such as telephone and romance scams, email deception scams, and financial crimes.
Among the 2,000 people arrested in Operation First Light 2022 were call center operators and fraudsters, and money launderers. Interpol stated that the operation also saw 4,000 bank accounts frozen and 3,000 suspects identified.
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