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Unfortunately in today’s world, scammers are coming at us from all angles to trick us to get us to part with our hard-earned money. We all need to be vigilant in protecting ourselves online. If you aren’t paying attention, even if you know what to look for, they can get you. There are numerous ways to detect fake sites or emails, phishing, and other scams.
Before we delve into the signs of fake websites, we will first take a closer look at the common types of scam that use websites, what happens when you accidentally access a fake website, and what you can do in case you unknowingly purchased items from it.
Fake or scam websites are fraudulent sites that look legitimate while secretly attempting to steal your personal information, money, or account access.
These deceptive platforms masquerade as trustworthy businesses or organizations, sending urgent messages such as popular shopping websites offering fantastic limited-time deals, banking websites requesting immediate account verification, government portals claiming you owe taxes or are eligible for refunds, and shipping companies asking for delivery fees.
The urgency aims to trick you into logging in and sharing sensitive details—credit card numbers, Social Security information, login credentials, and personal data. Once you submit your data, the scammers will steal your identity, drain your accounts, or sell your details to other criminals on the dark web.
These scam websites have become increasingly prevalent because they’re relatively inexpensive to create and can reach millions of potential victims quickly through email and text campaigns, social media ads, and search engine manipulation.
Cybersecurity researchers and consumer protection agencies discover these fraudulent sites through various methods, including monitoring suspicious domain registrations, analyzing reported phishing attempts, and tracking unusual web traffic patterns. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, losses from cyber-enabled fraud amounted to $13.7 billion, with fake websites representing a significant portion of these losses.
Visiting a fake website, accidentally or intentionally, can expose you to several serious security risks that can impact your digital life and financial well-being:
Scammers use different tricks to make fake websites look real, but most of them fall into familiar patterns. Knowing the main types of scam sites helps you recognize danger faster. This section lists the most common categories of scam websites, how they work, and the red flags that give them away before they can steal your information or money.
Understanding these common scam types helps you recognize fake sites before they can steal your information or money. When in doubt, verify legitimacy by visiting official websites directly through bookmarks or search engines rather than clicking suspicious links.
For the latest warnings and protection guidance, check resources from the Federal Trade Commission and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
You can protect yourself by learning to recognize the warning signs of fake sites. By understanding what these scams look like and how they operate, you’ll be better equipped to shop, bank, and browse online with confidence. Remember, legitimate companies will never pressure you to provide sensitive information through unsolicited emails or urgent pop-up messages.
Most scams usually start out from social engineering tactics such as phishing, smishing, and fake social media messages with suspicious links, before leading you to a fake website.
From these communications, the scammers impersonate legitimate organizations before finally executing their malevolent intentions. To avoid being tricked, it is essential to recognize the warning signs wherever you encounter them.
Fake emails are among the most common phishing attempts you’ll encounter. If you see any of these signs in an unsolicited email, it is best not to engage:
Smishing messages bear the same signs as phishing emails and have become increasingly sophisticated. These fake messages often appear to come from delivery services, banks, or government agencies. Common tactics include fake package delivery notifications, urgent banking alerts, or messages claiming you’ve won prizes or need to verify account information.
Legitimate organizations typically don’t include clickable links in unsolicited text messages, especially for account-related actions. When in doubt, don’t click the link—instead, open your banking app directly or visit the official website by typing the URL manually.
Social media platforms give scammers new opportunities to create convincing fake profiles and pages. They might impersonate customer service accounts, create fake giveaways, or send direct messages requesting personal information. These fake sites often use profile pictures and branding that closely resemble legitimate companies.
Unusual sender behavior is another indicator of a scam across all platforms. This includes messages from contacts you haven’t heard from in years, communications from brands you don’t typically interact with, or requests that seem out of character for the supposed sender.
Scammers have become increasingly cunning in creating fake websites that closely mimic legitimate businesses and services. Here are some real-life examples of how cybercriminals use fake websites to victimize consumers:
Scammers exploit your trust in the United States Postal Service (USPS), designing sophisticated fake websites to steal your personal information, payment details, or money. They know you’re expecting a package or need to resolve a delivery issue, making you more likely to enter sensitive information without carefully verifying the site’s authenticity.
USPS-themed smishing attacks arrive as text messages stating your package is delayed, undeliverable, or requires immediate action. Common phrases include “Pay $1.99 to reschedule delivery” or “Your package is held – click here to release.”
Scammers use various URL manipulation techniques to make their fake sites appear official. Watch for these red flags:
Always verify package information and delivery issues through official USPS channels before taking any action on suspicious websites or messages:
Reporting fake USPS websites helps protect others from falling victim to these scams and assists law enforcement in tracking down perpetrators.
Remember that legitimate USPS services are free for standard delivery confirmation and tracking. Any website demanding payment for basic package tracking or delivery should be treated as suspicious and verified through official USPS channels before providing any personal or financial information.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, tech support scams cost Americans nearly $1.5 billion in 2024. These types of social engineering attacks are increasingly becoming sophisticated, making it more important than ever to verify security alerts through official channels.
Sadly, many scammers are misusing the McAfee name to create fake tech support pop-up scams and trick you into believing your computer is infected or your protection has expired and hoping you’ll act without thinking.
These pop-ups typically appear while you’re browsing and claim your computer is severely infected with viruses, malware, or other threats. They use official-looking McAfee logos, colors, and messaging to appear legitimate to get you to call a fake support number, download malicious software, or pay for unnecessary services.
Learning to detect fake sites and pop-ups protects you from scam. Be on the lookout for these warning signs:
If you see a suspicious pop-up claiming to be from McAfee, here’s exactly what you should do:
To check if your McAfee protection is genuinely active and up-to-date:
Remember, legitimate McAfee software updates and notifications come through the installed program itself, not through random browser pop-ups. Your actual McAfee protection works quietly in the background without bombarding you with alarming messages.
Stay protected by trusting your installed McAfee software and always verifying security alerts through official McAfee channels such as your installed McAfee dashboard or the official website.
Be prepared and know how to respond quickly when something doesn’t feel right. If you suspect you’ve encountered a fake website, trust your instincts and take these protective steps immediately.
Recognizing fake sites and emails becomes easier with practice. The key is to trust your instincts—if something feels suspicious or too good to be true, take a moment to verify through official channels. With the simple verification techniques covered in this guide, you can confidently navigate the digital world and spot fake sites and emails before they cause harm.
Your best defense is to make these quick security checks a regular habit—verify URLs, look for secure connections, and trust your instincts when something feels off. Go directly to the source or bookmark your most-used services and always navigate to them. Enable two-factor authentication on important accounts, and remember that legitimate companies will never ask for sensitive information via email. Maintaining healthy skepticism about unsolicited communications will protect not only your personal information but also help create a safer online environment for everyone.
For the latest information on fake websites and scams and to report them, visit the Federal Trade Commission’s scam alerts or the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
The post Ways to Tell if a Website Is Fake appeared first on McAfee Blog.
KrebsOnSecurity recently heard from a reader whose boss’s email account got phished and was used to trick one of the company’s customers into sending a large payment to scammers. An investigation into the attacker’s infrastructure points to a long-running Nigerian cybercrime ring that is actively targeting established companies in the transportation and aviation industries.
Image: Shutterstock, Mr. Teerapon Tiuekhom.
A reader who works in the transportation industry sent a tip about a recent successful phishing campaign that tricked an executive at the company into entering their credentials at a fake Microsoft 365 login page. From there, the attackers quickly mined the executive’s inbox for past communications about invoices, copying and modifying some of those messages with new invoice demands that were sent to some of the company’s customers and partners.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the reader said the resulting phishing emails to customers came from a newly registered domain name that was remarkably similar to their employer’s domain, and that at least one of their customers fell for the ruse and paid a phony invoice. They said the attackers had spun up a look-alike domain just a few hours after the executive’s inbox credentials were phished, and that the scam resulted in a customer suffering a six-figure financial loss.
The reader also shared that the email addresses in the registration records for the imposter domain — roomservice801@gmail.com — is tied to many such phishing domains. Indeed, a search on this email address at DomainTools.com finds it is associated with at least 240 domains registered in 2024 or 2025. Virtually all of them mimic legitimate domains for companies in the aerospace and transportation industries worldwide.
An Internet search for this email address reveals a humorous blog post from 2020 on the Russian forum hackware[.]ru, which found roomservice801@gmail.com was tied to a phishing attack that used the lure of phony invoices to trick the recipient into logging in at a fake Microsoft login page. We’ll come back to this research in a moment.
DomainTools shows that some of the early domains registered to roomservice801@gmail.com in 2016 include other useful information. For example, the WHOIS records for alhhomaidhicentre[.]biz reference the technical contact of “Justy John” and the email address justyjohn50@yahoo.com.
A search at DomainTools found justyjohn50@yahoo.com has been registering one-off phishing domains since at least 2012. At this point, I was convinced that some security company surely had already published an analysis of this particular threat group, but I didn’t yet have enough information to draw any solid conclusions.
DomainTools says the Justy John email address is tied to more than two dozen domains registered since 2012, but we can find hundreds more phishing domains and related email addresses simply by pivoting on details in the registration records for these Justy John domains. For example, the street address used by the Justy John domain axisupdate[.]net — 7902 Pelleaux Road in Knoxville, TN — also appears in the registration records for accountauthenticate[.]com, acctlogin[.]biz, and loginaccount[.]biz, all of which at one point included the email address rsmith60646@gmail.com.
That Rsmith Gmail address is connected to the 2012 phishing domain alibala[.]biz (one character off of the Chinese e-commerce giant alibaba.com, with a different top-level domain of .biz). A search in DomainTools on the phone number in those domain records — 1.7736491613 — reveals even more phishing domains as well as the Nigerian phone number “2348062918302” and the email address michsmith59@gmail.com.
DomainTools shows michsmith59@gmail.com appears in the registration records for the domain seltrock[.]com, which was used in the phishing attack documented in the 2020 Russian blog post mentioned earlier. At this point, we are just two steps away from identifying the threat actor group.
The same Nigerian phone number shows up in dozens of domain registrations that reference the email address sebastinekelly69@gmail.com, including 26i3[.]net, costamere[.]com, danagruop[.]us, and dividrilling[.]com. A Web search on any of those domains finds they were indexed in an “indicator of compromise” list on GitHub maintained by Palo Alto Networks‘ Unit 42 research team.
According to Unit 42, the domains are the handiwork of a vast cybercrime group based in Nigeria that it dubbed “SilverTerrier” back in 2014. In an October 2021 report, Palo Alto said SilverTerrier excels at so-called “business e-mail compromise” or BEC scams, which target legitimate business email accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion activities. BEC criminals use that access to initiate or redirect the transfer of business funds for personal gain.
Palo Alto says SilverTerrier encompasses hundreds of BEC fraudsters, some of whom have been arrested in various international law enforcement operations by Interpol. In 2022, Interpol and the Nigeria Police Force arrested 11 alleged SilverTerrier members, including a prominent SilverTerrier leader who’d been flaunting his wealth on social media for years. Unfortunately, the lure of easy money, endemic poverty and corruption, and low barriers to entry for cybercrime in Nigeria conspire to provide a constant stream of new recruits.
BEC scams were the 7th most reported crime tracked by the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) in 2024, generating more than 21,000 complaints. However, BEC scams were the second most costly form of cybercrime reported to the feds last year, with nearly $2.8 billion in claimed losses. In its 2025 Fraud and Control Survey Report, the Association for Financial Professionals found 63 percent of organizations experienced a BEC last year.
Poking at some of the email addresses that spool out from this research reveals a number of Facebook accounts for people residing in Nigeria or in the United Arab Emirates, many of whom do not appear to have tried to mask their real-life identities. Palo Alto’s Unit 42 researchers reached a similar conclusion, noting that although a small subset of these crooks went to great lengths to conceal their identities, it was usually simple to learn their identities on social media accounts and the major messaging services.
Palo Alto said BEC actors have become far more organized over time, and that while it remains easy to find actors working as a group, the practice of using one phone number, email address or alias to register malicious infrastructure in support of multiple actors has made it far more time consuming (but not impossible) for cybersecurity and law enforcement organizations to sort out which actors committed specific crimes.
“We continue to find that SilverTerrier actors, regardless of geographical location, are often connected through only a few degrees of separation on social media platforms,” the researchers wrote.
Palo Alto has published a useful list of recommendations that organizations can adopt to minimize the incidence and impact of BEC attacks. Many of those tips are prophylactic, such as conducting regular employee security training and reviewing network security policies.
But one recommendation — getting familiar with a process known as the “financial fraud kill chain” or FFKC — bears specific mention because it offers the single best hope for BEC victims who are seeking to claw back payments made to fraudsters, and yet far too many victims don’t know it exists until it is too late.
Image: ic3.gov.
As explained in this FBI primer, the International Financial Fraud Kill Chain is a partnership between federal law enforcement and financial entities whose purpose is to freeze fraudulent funds wired by victims. According to the FBI, viable victim complaints filed with ic3.gov promptly after a fraudulent transfer (generally less than 72 hours) will be automatically triaged by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
The FBI noted in its IC3 annual report (PDF) that the FFKC had a 66 percent success rate in 2024. Viable ic3.gov complaints involve losses of at least $50,000, and include all records from the victim or victim bank, as well as a completed FFKC form (provided by FinCEN) containing victim information, recipient information, bank names, account numbers, location, SWIFT, and any additional information.
At 49, Branden Spikes isn’t just one of the oldest technologists who has been involved in Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). As the current director of information technology at X/Twitter and an early hire at PayPal, Zip2, Tesla and SpaceX, Spikes is also among Musk’s most loyal employees. Here’s a closer look at this trusted Musk lieutenant, whose Russian ex-wife was once married to Elon’s cousin.
The profile of Branden Spikes on X.
When President Trump took office again in January, he put the world’s richest man — Elon Musk — in charge of the U.S. Digital Service, and renamed the organization as DOGE. The group is reportedly staffed by at least 50 technologists, many of whom have ties to Musk’s companies.
DOGE has been enabling the president’s ongoing mass layoffs and firings of federal workers, largely by seizing control over computer systems and government data for a multitude of federal agencies, including the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Treasury Department.
It is difficult to find another person connected to DOGE who has stronger ties to Musk than Branden Spikes. A native of California, Spikes initially teamed up with Musk in 1997 as a lead systems engineer for the software company Zip2, the first major venture for Musk. In 1999, Spikes was hired as director of IT at PayPal, and in 2002 he became just the fourth person hired at SpaceX.
In 2012, Spikes launched Spikes Security, a software product that sought to create a compartmentalized or “sandboxed” web browser that could insulate the user from malware attacks. A review of spikes.com in the Wayback Machine shows that as far back as 1998, Musk could be seen joining Spikes for team matches in the online games Quake and Quake II. In 2016, Spikes Security was merged with another security suite called Aurionpro, with the combined company renamed Cyberinc.
A snapshot of spikes.com from 1998 shows Elon Musk’s profile in Spike’s clan for the games Quake and Quake II.
Spikes’s LinkedIn profile says he was appointed head of IT at X in February 2025. And although his name shows up on none of the lists of DOGE employees circulated by various media outlets, multiple sources told KrebsOnSecurity that Spikes was working with DOGE and operates within Musk’s inner circle of trust.
In a conversation with KrebsOnSecurity, Spikes said he is dedicated to his country and to saving it from what he sees as certain ruin.
“Myself, I was raised by a southern conservative family in California and I strongly believe in America and her future,” Spikes said. “This is why I volunteered for two months in DC recently to help DOGE save us from certain bankruptcy.”
Spikes told KrebsOnSecurity that he recently decided to head back home and focus on his job as director of IT at X.
“I loved it, but ultimately I did not want to leave my hometown and family back in California,” Spikes said of his tenure at DOGE. “After a couple of months it became clear that to continue helping I would need to move to DC and commit a lot more time, so I politely bowed out.”
Prior to founding Spikes Security, Branden Spikes was married to a native Russian woman named Natalia whom he’d met at a destination wedding in South America in 2003.
Branden and Natalia’s names are both on the registration records for the domain name orangetearoom[.]com. This domain, which DomainTools.com says was originally registered by Branden in 2009, is the home of a tax-exempt charity in Los Angeles called the California Russian Association.
Here is a photo from a 2011 event organized by the California Russian Association, showing Branden and Natalia at one of its “White Nights” charity fundraisers:
Branden and Natalia Spikes, on left, in 2011. The man on the far right is Ivan Y. Podvalov, a board member of the Kremlin-aligned Congress of Russian Americans (CRA). The man in the center is Feodor Yakimoff, director of operations at the Transib Global Sourcing Group, and chairman of the Russian Imperial Charity Balls, which works in concert with the Russian Heritage Foundation.
In 2011, the Spikes couple got divorced, and Natalia changed her last name to Haldeman. That is not her maiden name, which appears to be “Libina.” Rather, Natalia acquired the surname Haldeman in 1998, when she married Elon Musk’s cousin.
Reeve Haldeman is the son of Scott Haldeman, who is the brother of Elon Musk’s mother, Maye Musk. Divorce records show Reeve and Natalia officially terminated their marriage in 2007. Reeve Haldeman did not respond to a request for comment.
A review of other domain names connected to Natalia Haldeman’s email address show she has registered more than a dozen domains over the years that are tied to the California Russian Association, and an apparently related entity called the Russian Heritage Foundation, Inc.:
russianamericans.org
russianamericanstoday.com
russianamericanstoday.org
russiancalifornia.org
russianheritagefoundation.com
russianheritagefoundation.org
russianwhitenights.com
russianwhitenights.org
theforafoundation.org
thegoldentearoom.com
therussianheritagefoundation.org
tsarinahome.com
Ms. Haldeman did not respond to requests for comment. Her name and contact information appears in the registration records for these domains dating back to 2010, and a document published by ProPublica show that by 2016 Natalia Haldeman was appointed CEO of the California Russian Foundation.
The domain name that bears both Branden’s and Natalia’s names — orangetearoom.com — features photos of Ms. Haldeman at fundraising events for the Russian foundation through 2014. Additional photos of her and many of the same people can be seen through 2023 at another domain she registered in 2010 — russianheritagefoundation.com.
A photo from Natalia Haldeman’s Facebook page shows her mother (left) pictured with Maye Musk, Elon Musk’s mother, in 2022.
The photo of Branden and Natalia above is from one such event in 2011 (tied to russianwhitenights.org, another Haldeman domain). The person on the right in that image — Ivan Y. Podvalov — appears in many fundraising event photos published by the foundation over the past decade. Podvalov is a board member of the Congress of Russian Americans (CRA), a nonprofit group that is known for vehemently opposing U.S. financial and legal sanctions against Russia.
Writing for The Insider in 2022, journalist Diana Fishman described how the CRA has engaged in outright political lobbying, noting that the organization in June 2014 sent a letter to President Obama and the secretary of the United Nations, calling for an end to the “large-scale US intervention in Ukraine and the campaign to isolate Russia.”
“The US military contingents must be withdrawn immediately from the Eastern European region, and NATO’s enlargement efforts and provocative actions against Russia must cease,” the message read.
The Insider said the CRA director sent another two letters, this time to President Donald Trump, in 2017 and 2018.
“One was a request not to sign a law expanding sanctions against Russia,” Fishman wrote. “The other regretted the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats from the United States and urged not to jump to conclusions on Moscow’s involvement in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal.”
The nonprofit tracking website CauseIQ.com reports that The Russian Heritage Foundation, Inc. is now known as Constellation of Humanity.
The Russian Heritage Foundation and the California Russian Association both promote the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church. This page indexed by Archive.org from russiancalifornia.org shows The California Russian Foundation organized a community effort to establish an Orthodox church in Orange County, Calif.
A press release from the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) shows that in 2021 the Russian Heritage Foundation donated money to organize a conference for the Russian Orthodox Church in Serbia.
A review of the “Partners” listed on the Spikes’ jointly registered domain — orangetearoom.com — shows the organization worked with a marketing company called Russian American Media. Reporting by KrebsOnSecurity last year showed that Russian American Media also partners with the problematic people-search service Radaris, which was formed by two native Russian brothers in Massachusetts who have built a fleet of consumer data brokers and Russian affiliate programs.
When asked about his ex-wife’s history, Spikes said she has a good heart and bears no ill-will toward anyone.
“I attended several of Natalia’s social events over the years we were together and can assure you that she’s got the best intentions with those,” Spikes told KrebsOnSecurity. “There’s no funny business going on. It is just a way for those friendly immigrants to find resources amongst each other to help get settled in and chase the American dream. I mean, they’re not unlike the immigrants from other countries who come to America and try to find each other and help each other find others who speak the language and share in the building of their businesses here in America.”
Spikes said his own family roots go back deeply into American history, sharing that his 6th great grandfather was Alexander Hamilton on his mom’s side, and Jessie James on his dad’s side.
“My family roots are about as American as you can get,” he said. “I’ve also been entrusted with building and safeguarding Elon’s companies since 1999 and have a keen eye (as you do) for bad actors, so have enough perspective to tell you that Natalia has no bad blood and that she loves America.”
Of course, this perspective comes from someone who has the utmost regard for the interests of the “special government employee” Mr. Musk, who has been bragging about tossing entire federal agencies into the “wood chipper,” and who recently wielded an actual chainsaw on stage while referring to it as the “chainsaw for bureaucracy.”
“Elon’s intentions are good and you can trust him,” Spikes assured.
A special note of thanks for research assistance goes to Jacqueline Sweet, an independent investigative journalist whose work has been published in The Guardian, Rolling Stone, POLITICO and The Intercept.
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One of the most notorious providers of abuse-friendly “bulletproof” web hosting for cybercriminals has started routing its operations through networks run by the Russian antivirus and security firm Kaspersky Lab, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.
Security experts say the Russia-based service provider Prospero OOO (the triple O is the Russian version of “LLC”) has long been a persistent source of malicious software, botnet controllers, and a torrent of phishing websites. Last year, the French security firm Intrinsec detailed Prospero’s connections to bulletproof services advertised on Russian cybercrime forums under the names Securehost and BEARHOST.
The bulletproof hosting provider BEARHOST. This screenshot has been machine-translated from Russian. Image: Ke-la.com.
Bulletproof hosts are so named when they earn or cultivate a reputation for ignoring legal demands and abuse complaints. And BEARHOST has been cultivating its reputation since at least 2019.
“If you need a server for a botnet, for malware, brute, scan, phishing, fakes and any other tasks, please contact us,” BEARHOST’s ad on one forum advises. “We completely ignore all abuses without exception, including SPAMHAUS and other organizations.”
Intrinsec found Prospero has courted some of Russia’s nastiest cybercrime groups, hosting control servers for multiple ransomware gangs over the past two years. Intrinsec said its analysis showed Prospero frequently hosts malware operations such as SocGholish and GootLoader, which are spread primarily via fake browser updates on hacked websites and often lay the groundwork for more serious cyber intrusions — including ransomware.
A fake browser update page pushing mobile malware. Image: Intrinsec.
BEARHOST prides itself on the ability to evade blocking by Spamhaus, an organization that many Internet service providers around the world rely on to help identify and block sources of malware and spam. Earlier this week, Spamhaus said it noticed that Prospero was suddenly connecting to the Internet by routing through networks operated by Kaspersky Lab in Moscow.
Update, March 1, 9:43 a.m. ET: In a written statement, Kaspersky said it is aware of the public claim about the company allegedly providing services to a “bulletproof” web hosting provider. Here is their full statement:
“Kaspersky denies these claims as the company does not work and has never worked with the service provider in question. The routing through networks operated by Kaspersky doesn’t by default mean provision of the company’s services, as Kaspersky’s automatic system (AS) path might appear as a technical prefix in the network of telecom providers the company works with and provides its DDoS services.”
“Kaspersky pays great attention to conducting business ethically and ensuring that its solutions are used for their original purpose of providing cybersecurity protection. The company is currently investigating the situation to inform the company whose network could have served as a transit for a “bulletproof” web hosting provider so that the former takes the necessary measures.”
Kaspersky began selling antivirus and security software in the United States in 2005, and the company’s malware researchers have earned accolades from the security community for many important discoveries over the years. But in September 2017, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) barred U.S. federal agencies from using Kaspersky software, mandating its removal within 90 days.
Cybersecurity reporter Kim Zetter notes that DHS didn’t cite any specific justification for its ban in 2017, but media reports quoting anonymous government officials referenced two incidents. Zetter wrote:
According to one story, an NSA contractor developing offensive hacking tools for the spy agency had Kaspersky software installed on his home computer where he was developing the tools, and the software detected the source code as malicious code and extracted it from his computer, as antivirus software is designed to do. A second story claimed that Israeli spies caught Russian government hackers using Kaspersky software to search customer systems for files containing U.S. secrets.
Kaspersky denied that anyone used its software to search for secret information on customer machines and said that the tools on the NSA worker’s machine were detected in the same way that all antivirus software detects files it deems suspicious and then quarantines or extracts them for analysis. Once Kaspersky discovered that the code its antivirus software detected on the NSA worker’s machine were not malicious programs but source code in development by the U.S. government for its hacking operations, CEO Eugene Kaspersky says he ordered workers to delete the code.
Last year, the U.S. Commerce Department banned the sale of Kaspersky software in the U.S. effective July 20, 2024. U.S. officials argued the ban was needed because Russian law requires domestic companies to cooperate in all official investigations, and thus the Russian government could force Kaspersky to secretly gather intelligence on its behalf.
Phishing data gathered last year by the Interisle Consulting Group ranked hosting networks by their size and concentration of spambot hosts, and found Prospero had a higher spam score than any other provider by far.
AS209030, owned by Kaspersky Lab, is providing connectivity to the bulletproof host Prospero (AS200593). Image: cidr-report.org.
It remains unclear why Kaspersky is providing transit to Prospero. Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Kentik, said routing records show the relationship between Prospero and Kaspersky started at the beginning of December 2024.
Madory said Kaspersky’s network appears to be hosting several financial institutions, including Russia’s largest — Alfa-Bank. Kaspersky sells services to help protect customers from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and Madory said it could be that Prospero is simply purchasing that protection from Kaspersky.
But if that is the case, it doesn’t make the situation any better, said Zach Edwards, a senior threat researcher at the security firm Silent Push.
“In some ways, providing DDoS protection to a well-known bulletproof hosting provider may be even worse than just allowing them to connect to the rest of the Internet over your infrastructure,” Edwards said.
One month into his second term, President Trump’s actions to shrink the government through mass layoffs, firings and withholding funds allocated by Congress have thrown federal cybersecurity and consumer protection programs into disarray. At the same time, agencies are battling an ongoing effort by the world’s richest man to wrest control over their networks and data.
Image: Shutterstock. Greg Meland.
The Trump administration has fired at least 130 employees at the federal government’s foremost cybersecurity body — the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Those dismissals reportedly included CISA staff dedicated to securing U.S. elections, and fighting misinformation and foreign influence operations.
Earlier this week, technologists with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) arrived at CISA and gained access to the agency’s email and networked files. Those DOGE staffers include Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, a 19-year-old former denizen of the “Com,” an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network.
The investigative journalist Jacob Silverman writes that Coristine is the grandson of Valery Martynov, a KGB double agent who spied for the United States. Silverman recounted how Martynov’s wife Natalya Martynova moved to the United States with her two children after her husband’s death.
“Her son became a Virginia police officer who sometimes posts comments on blogs about his historically famous father,” Silverman wrote. “Her daughter became a financial professional who married Charles Coristine, the proprietor of LesserEvil, a snack company. Among their children is a 19-year-old young man named Edward Coristine, who currently wields an unknown amount of power and authority over the inner-workings of our federal government.”
Another member of DOGE is Christopher Stanley, formerly senior director for security engineering at X and principal security engineer at Musk’s SpaceX. Stanley, 33, had a brush with celebrity on Twitter in 2015 when he leaked the user database for the DDoS-for-hire service LizardStresser, and soon faced threats of physical violence against his family.
My 2015 story on that leak did not name Stanley, but he exposed himself as the source by posting a video about it on his Youtube channel. A review of domain names registered by Stanley shows he went by the nickname “enKrypt,” and was the former owner of a pirated software and hacking forum called error33[.]net, as well as theC0re, a video game cheating community.
DOGE has been steadily gaining sensitive network access to federal agencies that hold a staggering amount of personal and financial information on Americans, including the Social Security Administration (SSA), the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the Treasury Department.
Most recently, DOGE has sought broad access to systems at the Internal Revenue Service that contain the personal tax information on millions of Americans, including how much individuals earn and owe, property information, and even details related to child custody agreements. The New York Times reported Friday that the IRS had reached an agreement whereby a single DOGE employee — 25-year-old Gavin Kliger — will be allowed to see only anonymized taxpayer information.
The rapidity with which DOGE has rifled through one federal database after another in the name of unearthing “massive fraud” by government agencies has alarmed many security experts, who warned that DOGE’s actions bypassed essential safeguards and security measures.
“The most alarming aspect isn’t just the access being granted,” wrote Bruce Schneier and Davi Ottenheimer, referring to DOGE as a national cyberattack. “It’s the systematic dismantling of security measures that would detect and prevent misuse—including standard incident response protocols, auditing, and change-tracking mechanisms—by removing the career officials in charge of those security measures and replacing them with inexperienced operators.”
Jacob Williams is a former hacker with the U.S. National Security Agency who now works as managing director of the cybersecurity firm Hunter Labs. Williams kicked a virtual hornet’s nest last week when he posted on LinkedIn that the network incursions by DOGE were “a bigger threat to U.S. federal government information systems than China.”
Williams said while he doesn’t believe anyone at DOGE would intentionally harm the integrity and availability of these systems, it’s widely reported (and not denied) that DOGE introduced code changes into multiple federal IT systems. These code changes, he maintained, are not following the normal process for vetting and review given to federal government IT systems.
“For those thinking ‘I’m glad they aren’t following the normal federal government IT processes, those are too burdensome’ I get where you’re coming from,” Williams wrote. “But another name for ‘red tape’ are ‘controls.’ If you’re comfortable bypassing controls for the advancement of your agenda, I have questions – mostly about whether you do this in your day job too. Please tag your employer letting them know your position when you comment that controls aren’t important (doubly so if you work in cybersecurity). All satire aside, if you’re comfortable abandoning controls for expediency, I implore you to decide where the line is that you won’t cross in that regard.”
The DOGE website’s “wall of receipts” boasts that Musk and his team have saved the federal government more than $55 billion through staff reductions, lease cancellations and terminated contracts. But a team of reporters at The New York Times found the math that could back up those checks is marred with accounting errors, incorrect assumptions, outdated data and other mistakes.
For example, DOGE claimed it saved $8 billion in one contract, when the total amount was actually $8 million, The Times found.
“Some contracts the group claims credit for were double- or triple-counted,” reads a Times story with six bylines. “Another initially contained an error that inflated the totals by billions of dollars. While the DOGE team has surely cut some number of billions of dollars, its slapdash accounting adds to a pattern of recklessness by the group, which has recently gained access to sensitive government payment systems.”
So far, the DOGE website does not inspire confidence: We learned last week that the doge.gov administrators somehow left their database wide open, allowing someone to publish messages that ridiculed the site’s insecurity.
A screenshot of the DOGE website after it was defaced with the message: “These ‘experts’ left their database open – roro”
Trump’s efforts to grab federal agencies by their data has seen him replace career civil servants who refused to allow DOGE access to agency networks. CNN reports that Michelle King, acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration for more than 30 years, was shown the door after she denied DOGE access to sensitive information.
King was replaced by Leland Dudek, formerly a senior advisor in the SSA’s Office of Program Integrity. This week, Dudek posted a now-deleted message on LinkedIn acknowledging he had been placed on administrative leave for cooperating with DOGE.
“I confess,” Dudek wrote. “I bullied agency executives, shared executive contact information, and circumvented the chain of command to connect DOGE with the people who get stuff done. I confess. I asked where the fat was and is in our contracts so we can make the right tough choices.”
Dudek’s message on LinkedIn.
According to Wired, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was also bracing this week for roughly 500 staffers to be fired, which could have serious impacts on NIST’s cybersecurity standards and software vulnerability tracking work.
“And cuts last week at the US Digital Service included the cybersecurity lead for the central Veterans Affairs portal, VA.gov, potentially leaving VA systems and data more vulnerable without someone in his role,” Wired’s Andy Greenberg and Lily Hay Newman wrote.
NextGov reports that Trump named the Department of Defense’s new chief information security officer: Katie Arrington, a former South Carolina state lawmaker who helped steer Pentagon cybersecurity contracting policy before being put on leave amid accusations that she disclosed classified data from a military intelligence agency.
NextGov notes that the National Security Agency suspended her clearance in 2021, although the exact reasons that led to the suspension and her subsequent leave were classified. Arrington argued that the suspension was a politically motivated effort to silence her.
Trump also appointed the former chief operating officer of the Republican National Committee as the new head of the Office of National Cyber Director. Sean Cairncross, who has no formal experience in technology or security, will be responsible for coordinating national cybersecurity policy, advising the president on cyber threats, and ensuring a unified federal response to emerging cyber-risks, Politico writes.
DarkReading reports that Cairncross would share responsibility for advising the president on cyber matters, along with the director of cyber at the White House National Security Council (NSC) — a group that advises the president on all matters security related, and not just cyber.
The president also ordered staffers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to stop most work. Created by Congress in 2011 to be a clearinghouse of consumer complaints, the CFPB has sued some of the nation’s largest financial institutions for violating consumer protection laws.
The CFPB says its actions have put nearly $18 billion back in Americans’ pockets in the form of monetary compensation or canceled debts, and imposed $4 billion in civil money penalties against violators. The CFPB’s homepage has featured a “404: Page not found” error for weeks now.
Trump has appointed Russell Vought, the architect of the conservative policy playbook Project 2025, to be the CFPB’s acting director. Vought has publicly favored abolishing the agency, as has Elon Musk, whose efforts to remake X into a payments platform would otherwise be regulated by the CFPB.
The New York Times recently published a useful graphic showing all of the government staffing changes, including the firing of several top officials, affecting agencies with federal investigations into or regulatory battles with Musk’s companies. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee also have released a comprehensive account (PDF) of Musk’s various conflicts of interest.
Image: nytimes.com
As the Times notes, Musk and his companies have repeatedly failed to comply with federal reporting protocols aimed at protecting state secrets, and these failures have prompted at least three federal reviews. Those include an inquiry launched last year by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General. Four days after taking office, Trump fired the DoD inspector general along with 17 other inspectors general.
The Trump administration also shifted the enforcement priorities of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) away from prosecuting misconduct in the cryptocurrency sector, reassigning lawyers and renaming the unit to focus more on “cyber and emerging technologies.”
Reuters reports that the former SEC chair Gary Gensler made fighting misconduct in a sector he termed the “wild west” a priority for the agency, targeting not only cryptocurrency fraudsters but also the large firms that facilitate trading such as Coinbase.
On Friday, Coinbase said the SEC planned to withdraw its lawsuit against the crypto exchange. Also on Friday, the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit announced on X that a cybersecurity breach led to the theft of more than $1.4 billion worth of cryptocurrencies — making it the largest crypto heist ever.
On Feb. 10, Trump ordered executive branch agencies to stop enforcing the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which froze foreign bribery investigations, and even allows for “remedial actions” of past enforcement actions deemed “inappropriate.”
Trump’s action also disbanded the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative and KleptoCapture Task Force — units which proved their value in corruption cases and in seizing the assets of sanctioned Russian oligarchs — and diverted resources away from investigating white-collar crime.
That’s according to the independent Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an investigative journalism outlet that until very recently was funded in part by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The OCCRP lost nearly a third of its funding and was forced to lay off 43 reporters and staff after Trump moved to shutter USAID and freeze its spending. NBC News reports the Trump administration plans to gut the agency and leave fewer than 300 staffers on the job out of the current 8,000 direct hires and contractors.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network wrote this week that the sudden hold on USAID foreign assistance funding has frozen an estimated $268 million in agreed grants for independent media and the free flow of information in more than 30 countries — including several under repressive regimes.
Elon Musk has called USAID “a criminal organization” without evidence, and promoted fringe theories on his social media platform X that the agency operated without oversight and was rife with fraud. Just months before the election, USAID’s Office of Inspector General announced an investigation into USAID’s oversight of Starlink satellite terminals provided to the government of Ukraine.
KrebsOnSecurity this week heard from a trusted source that all outgoing email from USAID now carries a notation of “sensitive but unclassified,” a designation that experts say could make it more difficult for journalists and others to obtain USAID email records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). On Feb. 20, Fedscoop reported also hearing the same thing from multiple sources, noting that the added message cannot be seen by senders until after the email is sent.
On Feb. 18, Trump issued an executive order declaring that only the U.S. attorney general and the president can provide authoritative interpretations of the law for the executive branch, and that this authority extends to independent agencies operating under the executive branch.
Trump is arguing that Article II, Clause 1 of the Constitution vests this power with the president. However, jurist.org writes that Article II does not expressly state the president or any other person in the executive branch has the power to interpret laws.
“The article states that the president is required to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,'” Juris noted. “Jurisdiction to interpret laws and determine constitutionality belongs to the judicial branch under Article III. The framers of the Constitution designed the separation of duties to prevent any single branch of government from becoming too powerful.”
The executive order requires all agencies to submit to “performance standards and management objectives” to be established by the White House Office of Management and Budget, and to report periodically to the president.
Those performance metrics are already being requested: Employees at multiple federal agencies on Saturday reported receiving an email from the Office of Personnel Management ordering them to reply with a set of bullet points justifying their work for the past week.
“Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” the notice read. “Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments. Deadline is this Monday at 11:59 p.m. EST.”
An email sent by the OPM to more than two million federal employees late in the afternoon EST on Saturday, Feb. 22.
In a social media post Saturday, Musk said the directive came at the behest of President Trump, and that failure to respond would be taken as a resignation. Meanwhile, Bloomberg writes the Department of Justice has been urging employees to hold off replying out of concern doing so could trigger ethics violations. The National Treasury Employees Union also is advising its employees not to respond.
A legal battle over Trump’s latest executive order is bound to join more than 70 other lawsuits currently underway to halt the administration’s efforts to massively reduce the size of the federal workforce through layoffs, firings and attrition.
On Feb. 15, the president posted on social media, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” citing a quote often attributed to the French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte. Four days later, Trump referred to himself as “the king” on social media, while the White House nonchalantly posted an illustration of him wearing a crown.
Trump has been publicly musing about running for an unconstitutional third-term in office, a statement that some of his supporters dismiss as Trump just trying to rile his liberal critics. However, just days after Trump began his second term, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) introduced a bill to amend the Constitution so that Trump — and any other future president — can be elected to serve a third term.
This week at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Rep. Ogles reportedly led a group of Trump supporters calling itself the “Third Term Project,” which is trying to gain support for the bill from GOP lawmakers. The event featured images of Trump depicted as Caesar.
A banner at the CPAC conference this week in support of The Third Term Project, a group of conservatives trying to gain support for a bill to amend the Constitution and allow Trump to run for a third term.
Russia continues to be among the world’s top exporters of cybercrime, narcotics, money laundering, human trafficking, disinformation, war and death, and yet the Trump administration has suddenly broken with the Western world in normalizing relations with Moscow.
This week President Trump stunned U.S. allies by repeating Kremlin talking points that Ukraine is somehow responsible for Russia’s invasion, and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a “dictator.” The president repeated these lies even as his administration is demanding that Zelensky give the United States half of his country’s mineral wealth in exchange for a promise that Russia will cease its territorial aggression there.
President Trump’s servility toward an actual dictator — Russian President Vladimir Putin — does not bode well for efforts to improve the cybersecurity of U.S. federal IT networks, or the private sector systems on which the government is largely reliant. In addition, this administration’s baffling moves to alienate, antagonize and sideline our closest allies could make it more difficult for the United States to secure their ongoing cooperation in cybercrime investigations.
It’s also startling how closely DOGE’s approach so far hews to tactics typically employed by ransomware gangs: A group of 20-somethings with names like “Big Balls” shows up on a weekend and gains access to your servers, deletes data, locks out key staff, takes your website down, and prevents you from serving customers.
When the federal executive starts imitating ransomware playbooks against its own agencies while Congress largely gazes on in either bewilderment or amusement, we’re in four-alarm fire territory. At least in theory, one can negotiate with ransomware purveyors.
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Two-step verification, two-factor authentication, multi-factor authentication…whatever your social media platform calls it, it’s an excellent way to protect your accounts.
There’s a good chance you’re already using multi-factor verification with your other accounts — for your bank, your finances, your credit card, and any number of things. The way it requires an extra one-time code in addition to your login and password makes life far tougher for hackers.
It’s increasingly common to see nowadays, where all manner of online services only allow access to your accounts after you’ve provided a one-time passcode sent to your email or smartphone. That’s where two-step verification comes in. You get sent a code as part of your usual login process (usually a six-digit number), and then you enter that along with your username and password.
Some online services also offer the option to use an authenticator app, which sends the code to a secure app rather than via email or your smartphone. Authenticator apps work much in the same way, yet they offer three unique features:
Google, Microsoft, and others offer authenticator apps if you want to go that route. You can get a good list of options by checking out the “editor’s picks” at your app store or in trusted tech publications.
Whichever form of authentication you use, always keep that secure code to yourself. It’s yours and yours alone. Anyone who asks for that code, say someone masquerading as a customer service rep, is trying to scam you. With that code, and your username/password combo, they can get into your account.
Passwords and two-step verification work hand-in-hand to keep you safer. Yet not any old password will do. You’ll want a strong, unique password. Here’s how that breaks down:
Now, with strong passwords in place, you can get to setting up multi-factor verification on your social media accounts.
When you set up two-factor authentication on Facebook, you’ll be asked to choose one of three security methods:
And here’s a link to the company’s full walkthrough: https://www.facebook.com/help/148233965247823
When you set up two-factor authentication on Instagram, you’ll be asked to choose one of three security methods: an authentication app, text message, or WhatsApp.
And here’s a link to the company’s full walkthrough: https://help.instagram.com/566810106808145
And here’s a link to the company’s full walkthrough: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1920866721452534
And here’s a link to the company’s full walkthrough: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185839?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop
1. TapProfileat the bottom of the screen.
2. Tap the Menu button at the top.
3. Tap Settings and Privacy, then Security.
4. Tap 2-step verification and choose at least two verification methods: SMS (text), email, and authenticator app.
5. Tap Turn on to confirm.
And here’s a link to the company’s full walkthrough: https://support.tiktok.com/en/account-and-privacy/personalized-ads-and-data/how-your-phone-number-is-used-on-tiktok
The post How to Protect Your Social Media Passwords with Multi-factor Verification appeared first on McAfee Blog.
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