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Google, the FBI, ad-fraud fighting company WhiteOps and a collection of cyber security companies worked together to shut down one of the largest and most sophisticated digital ad-fraud schemes that infected over 1.7 million computers to generate fake clicks used to defraud online advertisers for years and made tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Dubbed 3ve (pronounced "Eve"), the online ad-fraud campaign is believed to have been active since at least 2014, but its fraudulent activity grew last year, turning it into a large-scale business and earning their operators more than $30 million in profit. Meanwhile, the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) also unsealed Tuesday a 13-count indictment against 8 people from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine who allegedly ran this massive online advertising scheme. The 3ve botnet scheme deployed different tactics, such as creating their own botnets, creating fake versions of both websites and visitors, selling fraudulent...

It's no secret that the internet isn't a very safe place. And it's not hard to understand why. It's a medium that connects billions of people around the world that affords bad actors enough anonymity to wreak havoc without getting caught. It's almost as if the internet's tailor-made to enable scams and fraud. And that's just what it does. Right now, the world's on track to  lose $10.5 trillion every year  to cybercrime. That number is so large that it's hard for the average person to grasp. And when most people hear it, they imagine that money's coming mostly from large-scale data breaches and ransomware attacks on large companies. Although businesses are among the hardest hit each year, they're by no means the only target. Every day, internet users are targeted too. They face barrages of phishing emails, compromised websites, and booby-trapped downloads. But among all of the attacks aimed at rank-and-file users, there's one that stand...

A coalition of law enforcement agencies coordinated by the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) has led to the arrest and extradition of a Belarussian and Ukrainian dual-national believed to be associated with Russian-speaking cybercrime groups. Maksim Silnikau (aka Maksym Silnikov), 38, went by the online monikers J.P. Morgan, xxx, and lansky. He was extradited to the U.S. from Poland on August 9, 2024, to face charges related to international computer hacking and wire fraud schemes. "J.P. Morgan and his associates are elite cyber criminals who practiced extreme operational and online security in an effort to avoid law enforcement detection," the NCA said in a statement. These individuals, the agency said, were responsible for the development and distribution of ransomware strains such as Reveton and Ransom Cartel , as well as exploit kits like Angler . Reveton, introduced in 2011, has been described as the "first ever ransomware-as-a-service business model." V...

Fake CNBC 's Website for Internet Fraud The beauty of the Internet is that you can make a truckload of money out here. Yes, you really could quit your full time job if you work hard.The bad news is most people either don't want to work at it, or they buy into some scam that causes them to waste money they could have used to invest in a real, legitimate venture. Today I got a mail from some random Email ID and with Subject  Wow ! thehackernews.com : My family sees the money I'm bringing in every week and they're simply proud of me. https://tinyurl.com/7lmetym I just Click the link provided in Email body and Here we notice a website with subdomain www.cnbc.com-exclusive.us , which having same mirror look like original CNBC website. In first sight the site seems to be legit because of Domain resemblance. Actually, the top level domain of this fraud site is  com-exclusive.us and Admin create another subdomain in it with name cnbc . Now complete URL look similar to...

The U.S. agency that tracks complaints of criminal activity on the Internet reported Thursday that fewer people complained about Internet fraud in 2010 than in the previous year. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) runs a Web site where victims can report details of any cyberfraud. It shares the data with law enforcement agencies to help them hunt down criminals. Last year it received 303,809 complaints, almost 10 percent fewer than the previous year's total of 336,655. The IC3 is run by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center. It released its annual report Thursday, based on data submitted in 2010. The largest single source of complaints was from people who had been duped by criminals posing as buyers and sellers. International scammers, preying on eBay and Craigslist users, have made millions over the past decade. Just last week, a Romanian national, Adrian Ghighina, pleaded guilty to his role in a scam that took in $2.7 ...

Microsoft has detailed the evolving capabilities of toll fraud malware apps on Android, pointing out its "complex multi-step attack flow" and an improved mechanism to evade security analysis. Toll fraud belongs to a category of billing fraud wherein malicious mobile applications come with hidden subscription fees, roping in unsuspecting users to premium content without their knowledge or consent. It's also different from other  fleeceware threats  in that the malicious functions are only carried out when a compromised device is connected to one of its target network operators. "It also, by default, uses cellular connection for its activities and forces devices to connect to the mobile network even if a Wi-Fi connection is available," Dimitrios Valsamaras and Sang Shin Jung of the Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team  said  in an exhaustive analysis. "Once the connection to a target network is confirmed, it stealthily initiates a fraudulent subscription...

Before Ransomware, Click fraud was one of the popular and efficient ways for cybercriminals to make money and with the explosive growth in the size of the online threats it is still making its way on the Internet. " Click-Fraud " is the practice of deceptively clicking on search ads with the intention of either increasing third-party website revenues or exhausting an advertiser's budget. Besides the search results, we all have seen advertisements placed in the search engine's WebPage. If the visitor clicks the Ad, the advertiser has to pay a fee to the search engine. A problem that has arisen with pay-per-click is results in Click-Fraud. The term " fraud " is used because in either case, the advertiser is paying for a click without receiving any true value. Of course, the number of clicks has to be large enough in order to gain a considerable amount of money, and in order to do that an attacker can use an automated script or malicious program to simulate multiple clicks b...

THE internet was never meant to do sensitive banking transactions, cyber criminals are winning the war against online security and Australia's easy going nature is making us vulnerable targets to ever-more sophisticated internet thugs. That was San Francisco-based internet security watcher and author Joseph Menn's assessment of the current state of the internet before he spoke to the Internet Industry Association's gala dinner in Sydney last night. The only glimmer of hope was that people were becoming more aware of the risks involved with the internet - which he described as a "loaded gun" - but we have to be even more savvy if we are not to be become a cyber crime victim. Mr Menn said when he interviewed the former head of the US Department of Justice's Cyber Crime Unit she said half of all credit cards were in the hands of criminals. "And if your credit card details weren't in criminals' hands it was only because they hadn't got around to...

At least four different threat actors have been identified as involved in an updated version of a massive ad fraud and residential proxy scheme called BADBOX , painting a picture of an interconnected cybercrime ecosystem. This includes SalesTracker Group, MoYu Group, Lemon Group, and LongTV, according to new findings from the HUMAN Satori Threat Intelligence and Research team, published in collaboration with Google, Trend Micro, Shadowserver, and other partners. The "complex and expansive fraud operation" has been codenamed BADBOX 2.0. It has been described as the largest botnet of infected connected TV (CTV) devices ever uncovered. "BADBOX 2.0, like its predecessor, begins with backdoors on low-cost consumer devices that enable threat actors to load fraud modules remotely," the company said . "These devices communicate with command-and-control (C2) servers owned and operated by a series of distinct but cooperative threat actors." The threat actors ar...

High impact vulnerabilities in modern communication protocol used by mobile network operators (MNOs) can be exploited to intercept user data and carry out impersonation, fraud, and denial of service (DoS) attacks, cautions a newly published research. The findings are part of a new Vulnerabilities in LTE and 5G Networks 2020 report published by London-based cybersecurity firm Positive Technologies last week. "This paper encompasses the results of security assessments performed during the 2018–2019 timeframe on behalf of 28 telecom operators in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America." Called the GPRS Tunnelling Protocol ( GTP ), the affected Internet Protocol (IP)-based communications standard defines a set of rules governing data traffic over 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. It also forms the basis for GPRS core network and its successor Evolved Packet Core ( EPC ), thus making it possible for users to keep connected to the Internet while moving from one place to the ot...

A Russian hacker indicted by a United States court for his involvement in online ad fraud schemes that defrauded multiple American companies out of tens of millions of dollars pleaded not guilty on Friday in a courtroom in Brooklyn, New York. Aleksandr Zhukov , 38, was arrested in November last year by Bulgarian authorities after the U.S. issued an international warrant against him, and was extradited by Bulgaria to the United States on Thursday (January 18, 2019). He is currently in prison in Brooklyn. In November 2018, law enforcement and multiple security firms collaborated to shut down one of the largest digital ad-fraud schemes, which they dubbed 3ve , that infected over 1.7 million computers worldwide to generate fake clicks used to defraud digital advertisers for years and made tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Pronounced "Eve," the online ad-fraud campaign was believed to have been active since at least 2014, but its fraudulent activity grew last yea...

As the travel industry rebounds post-pandemic, it is increasingly targeted by automated threats, with the sector experiencing nearly 21% of all bot attack requests last year. That's according to research from Imperva, a Thales company. In their 2024 Bad Bot Report , Imperva finds that bad bots accounted for 44.5% of the industry's web traffic in 2023—a significant jump from 37.4% in 2022.  The summer travel season and major European sporting events are expected to drive increased consumer demand for flights, accommodation, and other travel-related services. As a result, Imperva warns that the industry could see a surge in bot activity. These bots target the industry through unauthorized scraping, seat spinning, account takeover, and fraud. From Scraping to Fraud Bots are software applications that run automated tasks across the internet. Many of these tasks, from indexing websites for search engines to monitoring website performance, are legitimate, but a growing number are not...

Google is unveiling a set of new features in Android 15 to prevent malicious apps installed on the device from capturing sensitive data. This constitutes an update to the  Play Integrity API  that third-party app developers can take advantage of to secure their applications against malware. "Developers can check if there are other apps running that could be capturing the screen, creating overlays, or controlling the device," Dave Kleidermacher, vice president of engineering for Android security and privacy,  said . "This is helpful for apps that want to hide sensitive information from other apps and protect users from scams." Additionally, the Play Integrity API can be used to check if  Google Play Protect  is active and if the user's device is free of known malware before performing sensitive actions or handling sensitive data. Google, with Android 13, introduced a feature called  restricted settings  that by default blocks sideloaded apps from...

Online account creation poses a challenge for engineers and system architects: if you put up too many barriers, you risk turning away genuine users. Make it too easy, and you risk fraud or fake accounts. The Problem with Identity Verification The traditional model of online identity – username/email and password – has long outlived its usefulness. This is how multi-factor or two-factor authentication (MFA or 2FA) has come into play, to patch up vulnerabilities of the so-called knowledge-based model, usually by SMS passcode to verify possession of a mobile phone number. The simplicity of SMS-based verification has taken apps by storm – it's the default option, as most users have a mobile phone. Yet bad actors have learned how to exploit this verification method, leading to the menace of  SIM swap fraud , which is alarmingly easy to pull off and rising rapidly in incidents. There's been no lack of effort in finding a more secure factor that is still universal. For example, b...