Fraud

Prediction: Rough Road Ahead in 2014 For Security and Internet of Things

With the New Year fast approaching, it’s (unofficially) ‘prediction season,’ when everyone worth their salt stares into the crystal ball and tries to imagine what the world will look like 12 months hence. To sort through our 2014 predictions, we called on Mark Stanislav, the chief Security Evangelist at Duo Security. Mark is a seasoned security researcher who has taken an interest in the security of the Internet of Things. Earlier this year, we wrote about research Mark did on the IZON Camera, an IP-enabled home surveillance camera that is sold by big-box retail stores like Best Buy, as well as by the Apple Store. Beneath the IZON’s polished exterior, the IZON was a mess of sloppy coding and poor security implementation, Stanislav discovered. Like many IoT devices, IZON cameras punted security to those responsible for the wireless network that it was deployed on – essentially trusting any connection from […]

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Report: Cards Stolen From Target Used – at Target

The web site that first broke the news that data on millions of credit cards was lifted from box retailer Target now reports that those cards are being used to make fraudulent purchases at brick and mortar stores- including at Target itself.   Writing on the website Krebsonsecurity.com, Brian Krebs said that so-called “dumps” of stolen card data are flooding underground “carder” web sites where cyber criminals fence stolen card information. Citing an unnamed source at a New England bank, Krebs said that the bank had, with his help, purchased about 20 cards for its customers that were offered for sale on rescator(dot)la, the carder web site, and confirmed that all the stolen cards had been used at Target. Furthermore, the source confirmed to Krebs that some of the stolen cards had already been used to make fraudulent purchases – including at Target and other big box retailers. Only one […]

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Target Confirms Massive Breach – 40 million Credit Cards Affected

Black Friday just got a bit more black. Target Corp., one of the U.S.’s leading retail outfits, confirmed in a statement Thursday morning that reports of a massive breach of the company’s payment infrastructure, resulting in the exposure of data on an estimated 40 million credit and debit card accounts. The statement, released on Target’s website, follows media reports on Wednesday citing reports from leading credit card issuers. In it, the company confirmed “it is aware of unauthorized access to payment card data that may have impacted certain guests making credit and debit card purchases in its U.S. stores.” According to statements by Target, the credit card data was stolen between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15, 2013 and includes customer name, credit or debit card number, and the card’s expiration date and the CVV, or three-digit security code. Shoppers at the company’s U.S. stores were affected, but the breach did not affect Target’s Canadian […]

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How Connected Consumer Devices Fail The Security Test

The Internet of Things leverages the same, basic infrastructure as the original Internet – making use of protocols like TCP/IP, HTTP, Telnet and FTP. But the devices look and act very differently from traditional PCs, desktops and servers. Many IoT devices run embedded operating systems or variants of the open source Linux OS. And many are low-power and many are single function: designed to simply listen and observe their environment, then report that data to a central (cloud based repository).   But IoT devices are still susceptible to hacking and other malicious attacks, including brute force attacks to crack user names and passwords, injection attacks, man in the middle attacks and other types of spoofing.  Despite almost 20 years experience dealing with such threats in the context of PCs and traditional enterprise networks, however, too many connected devices that are sold to consumers lack even basic protections against such threats. […]

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BitCoin’s Popularity Is Undermining Promises of Anonymity

The virtual currency Bitcoin has soared in value against the U.S. dollar in recent months, topping out a staggering $913 USD to 1 Bitcoin (or BTC) as of late Tuesday. The currency had many ups and downs since it was launched in January 2009. But its main attraction, all along, has been anonymity. Unlike any other online payment system, Bitcoin transactions – like cash transactions – cannot be traced back to specific individuals. Also like cash, they cannot be reversed. Both those factors give Bitcoin users the confidence that their online purchasing activity – whether computer hardware or contraband will remain private. But a group of researchers at two U.S. universities have released a paper that suggests reports of Bitcoin’s anonymity may (to paraphrase Twain) “be greatly exaggerated.” Specifically: the researchers found that, by culling a variety of open source data using public data from the Bitcoin Peer to Peer network and from […]

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