Tag: FBI

Are Anti-Mule Ops Breaking The Bank Fraud Kill Chain?

Mules are the “last mile” in many online fraud operations: the unwitting dupes, or witting co-conspirators who lend their legitimate bank account (and reputation) to fraudsters who are looking for a way to cash out funds from a compromised account. Mules – often lured with promises of “work-from-home” riches receive fraudulent transactions, then immediately withdraw the funds and wire them to the fraudsters, minus a healthy “commission.”   In recent years, there has been ample coverage in the media of cyber crime and fraud and the role of money mules in scams. (I note Brian Krebs excellent reporting on the mule problem on his blog.)  And yet, the supply of mules seems to be endless. Or is it? According to researchers at the security firm RSA, bank account cash-out attacks are becoming less common online, and a sharp increase in busts on money mules may be the cause. Writing on […]

mike Janke silent circle

NSA’s PRISM Puts Privacy Startup Silent Circle Into Orbit

Government surveillance has been getting a lot of attention in recent weeks, with the leak of classified information about spying by the National Security Agency using information provided by U.S. telecommunications and Internet firms including Verizon, Facebook, Google and Apple. The stories have revealed the very different legal standards that govern electronic communications and more traditional communications such as phone and postal mail. They have also put many otherwise lawful Internet users in search of technology that will keep their private conversations and thoughts well…private. That, in turn, has sparked concern in the government that civilian use of encryption will hamper lawful interception of communications. Wired.com reported last week that, for the first time, encryption thwarted government surveillance under court-approved wiretaps. That report,  from the U.S. Administrative Office of the Courts (AO), said encryption was reported for 15 wiretaps in 2012, compared with just 7 wiretaps conducted during previous years. […]

Crowdstrike

Don’t Call It A Hack Back: Crowdstrike Unveils Falcon Platform

Lots of aspiring technology start-ups dream of getting their product written up in The New York Times or Wall Street Journal when it launches. For Crowdstrike Inc. a two year-old security start-up based in Laguna Niguel, California, media attention from the papers of record hasn’t been an issue. This reporter counted twelve articles mentioning the company in The Times in the last year, and another two reports in The Journal. Much of that ink has been spilled on stories related to Crowdstrike research on sophisticated attacks, or the company’s all-star executive team, including former McAfee executives George Kurtz (CEO) and Dmitri Alperovitch (CTO), as well as former FBI cybersecurity chief Shawn Henry (Crowdstrike’s head of services), who left the Bureau in April, 2012 to join the company. For much of that time, Crowdstrike has been known mostly as a security services and intelligence firm, but the goal was always to […]

Podcast: Project Prism – Has Uncle Sam Gone Rogue?

It was hard to escape the big news this week: revelations from The Guardian and The Washington Post about a program of widespread surveillance of online social networks and mobile phone use. The news, both the result of high-level leaks of classified information, has embroiled the Obama Administration in the most serious questions about domestic spying since the Nixon administration. To discuss the week’s events, Paul sat down with Ron Gula, the CEO of Tenable Network Security (and a former NSA security ninja) and Rick Forno, director of the University of Maryland Baltimore County’s Graduate Cybersecurity Program and a Junior Affiliate Scholar at the Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS).  While neither guest was surprised to read about the government’s monitoring of cell phone activity or data from social networks, the latest reports lay bare the dimensions of the U.S. government’s domestic spying post 9/11, and raise serious […]

Privacy Bombshell: NSA Given Access To Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Others

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the Washington Post story on The National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) and FBI’s widespread program of wire tapping, which leads directly into the servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple. The classified program, dubbed PRISM, dates to 2007 and the administration of George W. Bush and authorizes the nation’s top spy agency to peer deep into the servers of  popular social networking sites, compiling audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs. Together the information could enable intelligence operators to track an individual’s communications, movements relationships over time. The classified program came to light following the leak of a classified presentation for NSA staff, dated April 2013, that describes the program as critical and a leading contributor of intelligence to President Obama’s daily briefing. While a small cadre of members of Congress were briefed on the program […]