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Walmart accused of turning blind eye to transfer fraud totaling millions of dollars

Store giant brands watchdog's lawsuit 'factually misguided, legally flawed'

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Wed 29 Jun 2022 // 00:36 UTC

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.

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Ex-Uber security chief accused of hushing database breach must face fraud charges

Company execs and their lawyers are paying close attention to this one

Lindsay Clark Wed 29 Jun 2022 // 14:05 UTC

A US judge yesterday threw out an attempt to dismiss wire fraud charges against a former Uber employee accused of trying to cover up a computer crime.
Former Uber security chief Joseph Sullivan is set to face criminal charges after US District Judge William Orrick yesterday [PDF] rejected his claim that prosecutors did not "adequately" allege that the goal of the claimed misrepresentation of the security breach was to get Uber's drivers to stay with the platform and continue paying service fees.
In December last year, a federal grand jury handed down a superseding indictment adding wire fraud to the list of charges pending against Sullivan for his role in the alleged attempted cover-up of the 2016 security breach at Uber. The incident led to around 57 million user and driver records being stolen.

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Cisco warns of security holes in its security appliances

Bugs potentially useful for rogue insiders, admin account hijackers

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Wed 22 Jun 2022 // 20:16 UTC

Cisco has alerted customers to another four vulnerabilities in its products, including a high-severity flaw in its email and web security appliances.
The networking giant has issued a patch for that bug, tracked as CVE-2022-20664. The flaw is present in the web management interface of Cisco's Secure Email and Web Manager and Email Security Appliance in both the virtual and hardware appliances. Some earlier versions of both products, we note, have reached end of life, and so the manufacturer won't release fixes; it instead told customers to migrate to a newer version and dump the old.
This bug received a 7.7 out of 10 CVSS severity score, and Cisco noted that its security team is not aware of any in-the-wild exploitation, so far. That said, given the speed of reverse engineering, that day is likely to come.

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Capital One: Convicted techie got in via 'misconfigured' AWS buckets

Assistant US attorney: 'She wanted data, she wanted money, and she wanted to brag'

Richard Speed Mon 20 Jun 2022 // 13:32 UTC

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."

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Europol arrests nine suspected of stealing 'several million' euros via phishing

Victims lured into handing over online banking logins, police say

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Thu 23 Jun 2022 // 06:29 UTC

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.

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'Prolific' NetWalker extortionist pleads guilty to ransomware charges

Canadian stole $21.5m from dozens of companies worldwide

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Wed 29 Jun 2022 // 19:04 UTC

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.

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Google: How we tackled this iPhone, Android spyware

Watching people's every move and collecting their info – not on our watch, says web ads giant

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Fri 24 Jun 2022 // 10:46 UTC

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.

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NSO claims 'more than 5' EU states use Pegasus spyware

And it's like, what ... 12, 13,000 total targets a year max, exec says

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Fri 24 Jun 2022 // 06:22 UTC

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."

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Never fear, the White House is here to tackle web trolls

'No one should have to endure abuse just because they are attempting to participate in society'

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Fri 17 Jun 2022 // 22:31 UTC

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.

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Interpol anti-fraud operation busts call centers behind business email scams

1,770 premises raided, 2,000 arrested, $50m seized

Jeff Burt Fri 17 Jun 2022 // 02:58 UTC

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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