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A joint international law enforcement operation has dismantled Genesis Market, an illegal online marketplace that specialized in the sale of stolen credentials associated with email, bank accounts, and social media platforms. Coinciding with the infrastructure seizure, the major crackdown, which involved authorities from 17 countries, culminated in 119 arrests and 208 property searches in 13 nations. However, the  .onion mirror of the market  appears to be still up and running . The "unprecedented"  law   enforcement   exercise  has been codenamed  Operation Cookie Monster . Genesis Market, since its inception in March 2018, evolved into a major hub for criminal activities, offering access to data stolen from over 1.5 million compromised computers across the world totaling more than 80 million credentials. A majority of infections associated with Genesis Market related malware have been detected in the U.S., Mexico, Germany, Turkey, Sweden, Italy, France, Spain, Poland,

Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, the 20-year-old founder and the administrator of the now-defunct BreachForums has been  formally charged  in the U.S. with conspiracy to commit access device fraud. If proven guilty, Fitzpatrick, who went by the online moniker "pompompurin," faces a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison. He was  arrested  on March 15, 2023. "Cybercrime victimizes and steals financial and personal information from millions of innocent people," said U.S. Attorney Jessica D. Aber for the Eastern District of Virginia. "This arrest sends a direct message to cybercriminals: your exploitative and illegal conduct will be discovered, and you will be brought to justice." The development comes days after Baphomet, the individual who had taken over the responsibilities of BreachForums,  shut down the website , citing concerns that law enforcement may have obtained access to its backend. The Department of Justice (DoJ) has since confirmed that it co

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

In a sudden turn of events, Baphomet, the current administrator of BreachForums, said in an update on March 21, 2023, that the hacking forum has been officially taken down but emphasized that "it's not the end." "You are allowed to hate me, and disagree with my decision but I promise what is to come will be better for us all," Baphomet noted in a message posted on the BreachForums Telegram channel. The  shutdown  is suspected to have been prompted by suspicions that law enforcement may have obtained access to the site's configurations, source code, and information about the forum's users. The development follows the  arrest of its administrator  Conor Brian Fitzpatrick (aka "pompompurin"), who has been charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud. Over the past few months, BreachForums filled the void left by RaidForums last year, becoming a lucrative destination to purchase and sell stolen databases from variou

U.S. law enforcement authorities have arrested a 21-year-old New York man in connection with running the infamous BreachForums hacking forum under the online alias " Pompompurin ." The development, first reported by  Bloomberg Law , comes after News 12 Westchester, earlier this week, said that federal investigators "spent hours inside and outside of a home in Peekskill." "At one point, investigators were seen removing several bags of evidence from the house," the New York-based local news service  added . According  to an  affidavit  filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the suspect identified himself as Conor Brian Fitzpatrick and admitted to being the owner of the BreachForums website. "When I arrested the defendant on March 15, 2023, he stated to me in substance and in part that: a) his name was Conor Brian Fitzpatrick; b) he used the alias 'pompompurin,' and c) he was the owner and administrator of 'BreachForums,&#

A new malware tool that enables cybercriminal actors to build malicious Windows shortcut ( .LNK ) files has been spotted for sale on cybercrime forums. Dubbed Quantum Lnk Builder , the software makes it possible to spoof any extension and choose from over 300 icons, not to mention support  UAC  and  Windows SmartScreen  bypass as well as "multiple payloads per .LNK" file. Also offered are capabilities to generate .HTA and disk image (.ISO) payloads. Quantum Builder is available for lease at different price points: €189 a month, €355 for two months, €899 for six months, or as a one-off lifetime purchase for €1,500. ".LNK files are shortcut files that reference other files, folders, or applications to open them," Cyble researchers  said  in a report. "The [threat actor] leverages the .LNK files and drops malicious payloads using  LOLBins  [living-off-the-land binaries]." Early evidence of malware samples using Quantum Builder in the wild is said to da

Cybersecurity researchers have dissected the inner workings of an information-stealing malware called Saintstealer that's designed to siphon credentials and system information. "After execution, the stealer extracts username, passwords, credit card details, etc.," Cyble researchers  said  in an analysis last week. "The stealer also steals data from various locations across the system and compresses it in a password-protected ZIP file." A 32-bit C# .NET-based executable with the name "saintgang.exe," Saintstealer is equipped with anti-analysis checks, opting to terminate itself if it's running either in a sandboxed or virtual environment. The malware can capture a wide range of information that ranges from taking screenshots to gathering passwords, cookies, and autofill data stored in Chromium-based browsers such as Google Chrome, Opera, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, and Yandex, among others. It can also steal Discord multi-factor authentication toke

An international law enforcement operation raided and took down RaidForums, one of the world's largest hacking forums notorious for selling access to hacked personal information belonging to users. Dubbed Tourniquet, the seizure of the cybercrime website involved authorities from the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Portugal, and Romania, with the criminal investigation resulting in the  arrest  of the forum's administrator at his home last month in Croydon, England. The three confiscated domains associated with the illicit marketplace include "raidforums[.]com," "Rf[.]ws," and "Raid[.]lol." Diogo Santos Coelho (aka "Omnipotent"), the said founder and chief administrator, was apprehended in the U.K. on January 31 and is pending extradition to the U.S. Santos Coelho has been charged with conspiracy, access device fraud, and aggravated identity theft. In addition to detailing Santos Coelho's central role in designing and administering the soft

Two new ransomware-as-service (RaaS) programs have appeared on the threat radar this month, with one group professing to be a successor to  DarkSide  and  REvil , the two infamous ransomware syndicates that went off the grid following major attacks on Colonial Pipeline and Kaseya over the past few months. "The project has incorporated in itself the best features of DarkSide, REvil, and LockBit," the operators behind the new BlackMatter group said in their darknet public blog, making promises to not strike organizations in several industries, including healthcare, critical infrastructure, oil and gas, defense, non-profit, and government sectors. According to Flashpoint, the BlackMatter threat actor registered an account on Russian-language forums XSS and Exploit on July 19, quickly following it up with a post stating they are looking to purchase access to infected corporate networks comprising anywhere between 500 and 15,000 hosts in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.

In what's a case of hackers getting hacked, a prominent underground online criminal forum by the name of Maza has been compromised by unknown attackers, making it the fourth forum to have been breached since the start of the year. The intrusion is said to have occurred on March 3, with information about the forum members — including usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords — publicly disclosed on a breach notification page put up by the attackers, stating "Your data has been leaked" and "This forum has been hacked." "The announcement was accompanied by a PDF file allegedly containing a portion of forum user data. The file comprised more than 3,000 rows, containing usernames, partially obfuscated password hashes, email addresses and other contact details," cybersecurity firm Intel 471  said . Originally called Mazafaka, Maza is an elite, invite-only Russian-language cybercrime forum known to be operational as early as 2003, acting as an exc

If you are running an online discussion forum based on vBulletin software, make sure it has been updated to install a newly issued security patch that fixes a critical vulnerability. Maintainers of the vBulletin project recently announced an important patch update but didn't reveal any information on the underlying security vulnerability, identified as CVE-2020-12720 . Written in PHP programming language, vBulletin is a widely used Internet forum software that powers over 100,000 websites on the Internet, including forums for some Fortune 500 and many other top companies. Considering that the popular forum software is also one of the favorite targets for hackers, holding back details of the flaw could, of course, help many websites apply patches before hackers can exploit them to compromise sites, servers, and their user databases. However, just like previous times, researchers and hackers have already started reverse-engineering the software patch to locate and understan

ZoneAlarm, an internet security software company owned by Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point Technologies, has suffered a data breach exposing data of its discussion forum users, the company confirmed The Hacker News. With nearly 100 million downloads, ZoneAlarm offers antivirus software, firewall, and additional virus protection solutions to home PC users, small businesses, and mobile phones worldwide. Though neither ZoneAlarm or its parent company Check Point has yet publicly disclosed the security incident, the company quietly sent an alert via email to all affected users over this weekend, The Hacker News learned. The email-based breach notification advised ZoneAlarm forum users to immediately change their forum account passwords, informing them hackers have unauthorizedly gained access to their names, email addresses, hashed passwords, and date of births. Moreover, the company has also clarified that the security incident only affects users registered with the "

After releasing a patch for a critical zero-day remote code execution vulnerability late last month, vBulletin has recently published a new security patch update that addresses 3 more high-severity vulnerabilities in its forum software. If left unpatched, the reported security vulnerabilities, which affect vBulletin 5.5.4 and prior versions, could eventually allow remote attackers to take complete control over targeted web servers and steal sensitive user information. Written in PHP, vBulletin is a widely used proprietary Internet forum software package that powers over 100,000 websites on the Internet, including Fortune 500 and Alexa Top 1 million companies websites and forums. Discovered by application security researcher Egidio Romano, the first vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-17132 , is a remote code execution flaw, while the other two are SQL injection issues, both assigned a single ID as CVE-2019-17271 . vBulletin RCE and SQLi Flaws The RCE flaw resides in the w

Europol announced the shut down of two prolific dark web marketplaces— Wall Street Market and Silkkitie (also known as Valhalla)—in simultaneous global operations against underground websites for trading drugs, stolen credit card numbers, malicious software, and other illegal goods. Police in western Germany has also arrested three men who were allegedly running Wall Street Market, the world's second largest dark marketplace with more than a million users and 5,400 vendors. Besides this, the operation involving Europol , Dutch police and the FBI also led to the arrests of two major suppliers of narcotics via the Wall Street Market site in Los Angeles, the United States. According to the Europol, the police officers seized the computers used to run the illegal market place, along with more than €550 000 (£472,000 or $621,000) in cash, more than €1 Million in Bitcoin and Monero cryptocurrencies, expensive cars, and other evidence. In a press release published today, Eu

In an international operation involving law enforcement authorities from the U.S. and several European countries, feds have shut down an online underground marketplace and arrested three suspects in Ukraine. Dubbed xDedic, the illegal online marketplace let cybercriminals buy, sell or rent out access to thousands of hacked computers and servers across the world and personally identifiable information of U.S. residents. The underground website had been around for years with its administrators strategically maintaining and concealing the locations of its servers all over the world to facilitate the operation of the underground site. xDedic offered buyers to search for over 176,000 unique compromised servers—which were usually in the form of credentials for compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) accounts—from around the world by price, operating system, or even their geographic location from where it was stolen. xDedic impacted victims in multiple industries, "including

The real identity of Tessa88—the notorious hacker tied to several high-profile cyber attacks including the LinkedIn , DropBox and MySpace mega breaches—has been revealed as Maksim Vladimirovich Donakov (Максим Владимирович Донаков), a resident of Penza, Russian Federation. In early 2016, a hacker with pseudonym Tessa88 emerged online offering stolen databases from some of the biggest social media websites in the world, including LinkedIn, MySpace, VKontakte (vk.com), Dropbox, Rambler , and Twitter , for sale in various underground hacking forums. The stolen data, taken years ago from several social media sites, included more than half a billion username and password combinations, which were then used in phishing, account takeover, and other cyber attacks. Though Tessa88's profile was active for a few months between February and May 2016, the OPSEC analysis revealed that the same person was involved in various cybercriminal activities since as early as 2012 under different

A security researcher has publicly disclosed two critical zero-day vulnerabilities in Vanilla Forums, an open source software that powers discussion on over 500,000 websites, which could allow unauthenticated, remote attackers to fully compromise targeted websites easily. Discovered by Polish security researcher Dawid Golunski of Legal Hackers, two separate unpatched vulnerabilities, a remote code execution ( CVE-2016-10033 ) and host header injection ( CVE-2016-10073 ), affect the latest version of Vanilla Forums 2.3, leaving hundreds of thousands of websites and their visitors vulnerable to various hacking attacks. Vanilla Forums: Remote Code Execution Flaw According to Golunski, both vulnerabilities technically exist because Vanilla Forum is still using a vulnerable version of PHPMailer , one of the most popular open source PHP libraries used to send emails. Last year Golunski reported a critical remote code execution flaw ( CVE-2016-10033 ) in PHPMailer library that al

Do you own an account on one of the two hugely popular PlayStation and Xbox gaming forums? Your details may have been exposed, as it has been revealed that the two popular video gaming forums, "XBOX360 ISO" and "PSP ISO," has been hacked, exposing email addresses, account passwords and IP addresses of 2.5 Million gamers globally. The attackers hacked and breached both "XBOX360 ISO" and "PSP ISO" forums in September 2015, but the details of this massive hack just emerge, reports The Sun . Mostly gamers who look for free versions of popular games are members of these two gaming forums, which provide download links for gaming ISO files – digital copies of online video games lifted from physical game disks – to the owners of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's Playstation Portable. Visiting such forum websites and downloading games through the provided links often involve an illegal breach of copyright. So, if you are one of those ga

No software is immune to being Hacked! Not even Linux. The Ubuntu online forums have been hacked, and data belonging to over 2 Million users have been compromised, Canonical just announced. The compromised users' data include their IP addresses, usernames, and email addresses, according to the company, who failed to apply a patch to secure its users' data. However, users should keep in mind that the hack did not affect the Ubuntu operating system, or it was not due to a vulnerability or weakness in the OS. Instead, the breach only affected the Ubuntu online forums that people use to discuss the OS, said BetaNews, who initially reported the news. "There has been a security breach on the Ubuntu Forums site," Jane Silber, Chief Executive Officer at Canonical wrote in a blog post . "We take information security and user privacy very seriously, follow a strict set of security practices and this incident has triggered a thorough investigation." "C