The Hacker News - Cybersecurity News and Analysis: Search results for internet fraud

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

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

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 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

In Simple way we can say that cyber crime is unlawful acts wherein the computer is either a tool or a target or both Cyber crimes can involve criminal activities that are traditional in nature, such as theft, fraud, forgery, defamation and mischief, all of which are subject to the Indian Penal Code. The abuse of computers has also given birth to a gamut of new age crimes that are addressed by the Information Technology Act, 2000. We can categorize Cyber crimes in two ways The Computer as a Target : -  Using a computer to attack other computers. e.g. Hacking, Virus/Worm attacks, DOS attack etc. The computer as a weapon :- Using a computer to commit real world crimes. e.g. Cyber Terrorism, IPR violations, Credit card frauds, EFT frauds, Pornography etc. Cyber Crime regulated by Cyber Laws or Internet Laws Technical Aspects Technological advancements have created new possibilities for criminal activity, in particular the criminal misuse of information technologies such as

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

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

Posing as IT support staff, criminals are picking up the phone in order to push Rogue anti-Virus software onto the system's of unsuspecting U.K. Internet users. The news comes from GetSafeOnline.org, who is using it to kickoff a week of events supporting Internet safety. These fly-by-night boiler room operations sometimes employ up to 400 people, who use a mix of sales and social engineering to scam their victims into believing that their system is in desperate need of repair. The end goal is to walk away with credit card information, verified when the Rogue anti-Virus is purchased, or remote access to the victim's system for future use. A typical call likely comes out of the blue. On the other end of the line, a person claiming to be an IT Helpdesk technician begins the process of forming a rapport with the mark. Like any other cold calling scam, the idea is to form an instant bond. The caller starts by representing themselves to the mark in a position of authority and trust, by f

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 milli