Rachel Weiner reports: Federal agents said they have uncovered a massive international identity-theft scheme that victimized at least hundreds and maybe thousands of people, including an actress who appeared in the television shows “Smallville” and “Supergirl.” On Thursday, federal authorities arrested two people in Virginia and two in Georgia who allegedly were part of a…
Category: Of Note
Screwing up the basics of incident response, Friday edition
For today’s object lesson (and maybe abject lesson), I give you FIS Global and Guaranty Bank and Trust. I’ve written up the incident in more detail over on the Daily Dot, but the short version is a hacker (@1×0123) found a vulnerability in FIS Global’s client portal login and tweeted about it. FIS didn’t respond to him directly. Instead, they…
Cryptocurrency-Backed Venture Capital Fund Hacked; Ether Plunges
Olga Kharif reports: Hackers moved some digital money from the Decentralized Autonomous Organization, a cryptocurrency-backed venture capital fund, sending the price of ether — the virtual currency underlying the project — plunging. Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, which supports ether, asked exchanges in a Reddit post to “please pause ETH and DAO trading, deposits and withdrawals until further notice,”…
Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
Marcus Weisgerber reports: The U.S. Air Force has lost records concerning 100,000 investigations into everything from workplace disputes to fraud. A database that hosts files from the Air Force’s inspector general and legislative liaison divisions became corrupted last month, destroying data created between 2004 and now, service officials said. Neither the Air Force nor Lockheed Martin, the defense…
Mossack Fonseca worker arrested in Switzerland
Juliette Garside reports: An IT worker at the Geneva offices of Mossack Fonseca, the offshore law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers scandal, has been arrested in the hunt for the whistleblower behind the biggest ever leak to journalists. […] “A procedure has been opened by the public ministry of Geneva following a complaint…
North Korea hacked 140,000 South Korean computers in a huge campaign
Jack Kim reports: North Korea hacked into more than 140,000 computers at 160 South Korean firms and government agencies, planting malicious code under a long-term plan laying groundwork for a massive cyber attack against its rival, police in the South said on Monday. South Korea has been on heightened alert against cyber attacks by theNorth after Pyongyang conducted a…