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The FBI joined authorities across Europe last week in seizing domain names for Cracked and Nulled, English-language cybercrime forums with millions of users that trafficked in stolen data, hacking tools and malware. An investigation into the history of these communities shows their apparent co-founders quite openly operate an Internet service provider and a pair of e-commerce platforms catering to buyers and sellers on both forums.
In this 2019 post from Cracked, a forum moderator told the author of the post (Buddie) that the owner of the RDP service was the founder of Nulled, a.k.a. “Finndev.” Image: Ke-la.com.
On Jan. 30, the U.S. Department of Justice said it seized eight domain names that were used to operate Cracked, a cybercrime forum that sprang up in 2018 and attracted more than four million users. The DOJ said the law enforcement action, dubbed Operation Talent, also seized domains tied to Sellix, Cracked’s payment processor.
In addition, the government seized the domain names for two popular anonymity services that were heavily advertised on Cracked and Nulled and allowed customers to rent virtual servers: StarkRDP[.]io, and rdp[.]sh.
Those archived webpages show both RDP services were owned by an entity called 1337 Services Gmbh. According to corporate records compiled by Northdata.com, 1337 Services GmbH is also known as AS210558 and is incorporated in Hamburg, Germany.
The Cracked forum administrator went by the nicknames “FlorainN” and “StarkRDP” on multiple cybercrime forums. Meanwhile, a LinkedIn profile for a Florian M. from Germany refers to this person as the co-founder of Sellix and founder of 1337 Services GmbH.
Northdata’s business profile for 1337 Services GmbH shows the company is controlled by two individuals: 32-year-old Florian Marzahl and Finn Alexander Grimpe, 28.
An organization chart showing the owners of 1337 Services GmbH as Florian Marzahl and Finn Grimpe. Image: Northdata.com.
Neither Marzahl nor Grimpe responded to requests for comment. But Grimpe’s first name is interesting because it corresponds to the nickname chosen by the founder of Nulled, who goes by the monikers “Finn” and “Finndev.” NorthData reveals that Grimpe was the founder of a German entity called DreamDrive GmbH, which rented out high-end sports cars and motorcycles.
According to the cyber intelligence firm Intel 471, a user named Finndev registered on multiple cybercrime forums, including Raidforums [seized by the FBI in 2022], Void[.]to, and vDOS, a DDoS-for-hire service that was shut down in 2016 after its founders were arrested.
The email address used for those accounts was f.grimpe@gmail.com. DomainTools.com reports f.grimpe@gmail.com was used to register at least nine domain names, including nulled[.]lol and nulled[.]it. Neither of these domains were among those seized in Operation Talent.
Intel471 finds the user FlorainN registered across multiple cybercrime forums using the email address olivia.messla@outlook.de. The breach tracking service Constella Intelligence says this email address used the same password (and slight variations of it) across many accounts online — including at hacker forums — and that the same password was used in connection with dozens of other email addresses, such as florianmarzahl@hotmail.de, and fmarzahl137@gmail.com.
The Justice Department said the Nulled marketplace had more than five million members, and has been selling stolen login credentials, stolen identification documents and hacking services, as well as tools for carrying out cybercrime and fraud, since 2016.
Perhaps fittingly, both Cracked and Nulled have been hacked over the years, exposing countless private messages between forum users. A review of those messages archived by Intel 471 showed that dozens of early forum members referred privately to Finndev as the owner of shoppy[.]gg, an e-commerce platform that caters to the same clientele as Sellix.
Shoppy was not targeted as part of Operation Talent, and its website remains online. Northdata reports that Shoppy’s business name — Shoppy Ecommerce Ltd. — is registered at an address in Gan-Ner, Israel, but there is no ownership information about this entity. Shoppy did not respond to requests for comment.
Constella found that a user named Shoppy registered on Cracked in 2019 using the email address finn@shoppy[.]gg. Constella says that email address is tied to a Twitter/X account for Shoppy Ecommerce in Israel.
The DOJ said one of the alleged administrators of Nulled, a 29-year-old Argentinian national named Lucas Sohn, was arrested in Spain. The government has not announced any other arrests or charges associated with Operation Talent.
Indeed, both StarkRDP and FloraiN have posted to their accounts on Telegram that there were no charges levied against the proprietors of 1337 Services GmbH. FlorainN told former customers they were in the process of moving to a new name and domain for StarkRDP, where existing accounts and balances would be transferred.
“StarkRDP has always been operating by the law and is not involved in any of these alleged crimes and the legal process will confirm this,” the StarkRDP Telegram account wrote on January 30. “All of your servers are safe and they have not been collected in this operation. The only things that were seized is the website server and our domain. Unfortunately, no one can tell who took it and with whom we can talk about it. Therefore, we will restart operation soon, under a different name, to close the chapter [of] ‘StarkRDP.'”
Image: Shutterstock, ArtHead.
In an effort to blend in and make their malicious traffic tougher to block, hosting firms catering to cybercriminals in China and Russia increasingly are funneling their operations through major U.S. cloud providers. Research published this week on one such outfit — a sprawling network tied to Chinese organized crime gangs and aptly named “Funnull” — highlights a persistent whac-a-mole problem facing cloud services.
In October 2024, the security firm Silent Push published a lengthy analysis of how Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure were providing services to Funnull, a two-year-old Chinese content delivery network that hosts a wide variety of fake trading apps, pig butchering scams, gambling websites, and retail phishing pages.
Funnull made headlines last summer after it acquired the domain name polyfill[.]io, previously the home of a widely-used open source code library that allowed older browsers to handle advanced functions that weren’t natively supported. There were still tens of thousands of legitimate domains linking to the Polyfill domain at the time of its acquisition, and Funnull soon after conducted a supply-chain attack that redirected visitors to malicious sites.
Silent Push’s October 2024 report found a vast number of domains hosted via Funnull promoting gambling sites that bear the logo of the Suncity Group, a Chinese entity named in a 2024 UN report (PDF) for laundering millions of dollars for the North Korean Lazarus Group.
In 2023, Suncity’s CEO was sentenced to 18 years in prison on charges of fraud, illegal gambling, and “triad offenses,” i.e. working with Chinese transnational organized crime syndicates. Suncity is alleged to have built an underground banking system that laundered billions of dollars for criminals.
It is likely the gambling sites coming through Funnull are abusing top casino brands as part of their money laundering schemes. In reporting on Silent Push’s October report, TechCrunch obtained a comment from Bwin, one of the casinos being advertised en masse through Funnull, and Bwin said those websites did not belong to them.
Gambling is illegal in China except in Macau, a special administrative region of China. Silent Push researchers say Funnull may be helping online gamblers in China evade the Communist party’s “Great Firewall,” which blocks access to gambling destinations.
Silent Push’s Zach Edwards said that upon revisiting Funnull’s infrastructure again this month, they found dozens of the same Amazon and Microsoft cloud Internet addresses still forwarding Funnull traffic through a dizzying chain of auto-generated domain names before redirecting malicious or phishous websites.
Edwards said Funnull is a textbook example of an increasing trend Silent Push calls “infrastructure laundering,” wherein crooks selling cybercrime services will relay some or all of their malicious traffic through U.S. cloud providers.
“It’s crucial for global hosting companies based in the West to wake up to the fact that extremely low quality and suspicious web hosts based out of China are deliberately renting IP space from multiple companies and then mapping those IPs to their criminal client websites,” Edwards told KrebsOnSecurity. “We need these major hosts to create internal policies so that if they are renting IP space to one entity, who further rents it to host numerous criminal websites, all of those IPs should be reclaimed and the CDN who purchased them should be banned from future IP rentals or purchases.”
A Suncity gambling site promoted via Funnull. The sites feature a prompt for a Tether/USDT deposit program.
Reached for comment, Amazon referred this reporter to a statement Silent Push included in a report released today. Amazon said AWS was already aware of the Funnull addresses tracked by Silent Push, and that it had suspended all known accounts linked to the activity.
Amazon said that contrary to implications in the Silent Push report, it has every reason to aggressively police its network against this activity, noting the accounts tied to Funnull used “fraudulent methods to temporarily acquire infrastructure, for which it never pays. Thus, AWS incurs damages as a result of the abusive activity.”
“When AWS’s automated or manual systems detect potential abuse, or when we receive reports of potential abuse, we act quickly to investigate and take action to stop any prohibited activity,” Amazon’s statement continues. “In the event anyone suspects that AWS resources are being used for abusive activity, we encourage them to report it to AWS Trust & Safety using the report abuse form. In this case, the authors of the report never notified AWS of the findings of their research via our easy-to-find security and abuse reporting channels. Instead, AWS first learned of their research from a journalist to whom the researchers had provided a draft.”
Microsoft likewise said it takes such abuse seriously, and encouraged others to report suspicious activity found on its network.
“We are committed to protecting our customers against this kind of activity and actively enforce acceptable use policies when violations are detected,” Microsoft said in a written statement. “We encourage reporting suspicious activity to Microsoft so we can investigate and take appropriate actions.”
Richard Hummel is threat intelligence lead at NETSCOUT. Hummel said it used to be that “noisy” and frequently disruptive malicious traffic — such as automated application layer attacks, and “brute force” efforts to crack passwords or find vulnerabilities in websites — came mostly from botnets, or large collections of hacked devices.
But he said the vast majority of the infrastructure used to funnel this type of traffic is now proxied through major cloud providers, which can make it difficult for organizations to block at the network level.
“From a defenders point of view, you can’t wholesale block cloud providers, because a single IP can host thousands or tens of thousands of domains,” Hummel said.
In May 2024, KrebsOnSecurity published a deep dive on Stark Industries Solutions, an ISP that materialized at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has been used as a global proxy network that conceals the true source of cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns against enemies of Russia. Experts said much of the malicious traffic traversing Stark’s network (e.g. vulnerability scanning and password brute force attacks) was being bounced through U.S.-based cloud providers.
Stark’s network has been a favorite of the Russian hacktivist group called NoName057(16), which frequently launches huge distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against a variety of targets seen as opposed to Moscow. Hummel said NoName’s history suggests they are adept at cycling through new cloud provider accounts, making anti-abuse efforts into a game of whac-a-mole.
“It almost doesn’t matter if the cloud provider is on point and takes it down because the bad guys will just spin up a new one,” he said. “Even if they’re only able to use it for an hour, they’ve already done their damage. It’s a really difficult problem.”
Edwards said Amazon declined to specify whether the banned Funnull users were operating using compromised accounts or stolen payment card data, or something else.
“I’m surprised they wanted to lean into ‘We’ve caught this 1,200+ times and have taken these down!’ and yet didn’t connect that each of those IPs was mapped to [the same] Chinese CDN,” he said. “We’re just thankful Amazon confirmed that account mules are being used for this and it isn’t some front-door relationship. We haven’t heard the same thing from Microsoft but it’s very likely that the same thing is happening.”
Funnull wasn’t always a bulletproof hosting network for scam sites. Prior to 2022, the network was known as Anjie CDN, based in the Philippines. One of Anjie’s properties was a website called funnull[.]app. Loading that domain reveals a pop-up message by the original Anjie CDN owner, who said their operations had been seized by an entity known as Fangneng CDN and ACB Group, the parent company of Funnull.
A machine-translated message from the former owner of Anjie CDN, a Chinese content delivery network that is now Funnull.
“After I got into trouble, the company was managed by my family,” the message explains. “Because my family was isolated and helpless, they were persuaded by villains to sell the company. Recently, many companies have contacted my family and threatened them, believing that Fangneng CDN used penetration and mirroring technology through customer domain names to steal member information and financial transactions, and stole customer programs by renting and selling servers. This matter has nothing to do with me and my family. Please contact Fangneng CDN to resolve it.”
In January 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued a proposed rule that would require cloud providers to create a “Customer Identification Program” that includes procedures to collect data sufficient to determine whether each potential customer is a foreign or U.S. person.
According to the law firm Crowell & Moring LLP, the Commerce rule also would require “infrastructure as a service” (IaaS) providers to report knowledge of any transactions with foreign persons that might allow the foreign entity to train a large AI model with potential capabilities that could be used in malicious cyber-enabled activity.
“The proposed rulemaking has garnered global attention, as its cross-border data collection requirements are unprecedented in the cloud computing space,” Crowell wrote. “To the extent the U.S. alone imposes these requirements, there is concern that U.S. IaaS providers could face a competitive disadvantage, as U.S. allies have not yet announced similar foreign customer identification requirements.”
It remains unclear if the new White House administration will push forward with the requirements. The Commerce action was mandated as part of an executive order President Trump issued a day before leaving office in January 2021.
Microsoft today released security updates to fix at least 117 security holes in Windows computers and other software, including two vulnerabilities that are already seeing active attacks. Also, Adobe plugged 52 security holes across a range of products, and Apple has addressed a bug in its new macOS 15 “Sequoia” update that broke many cybersecurity tools.
One of the zero-day flaws — CVE-2024-43573 — stems from a security weakness in MSHTML, the proprietary engine of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser. If that sounds familiar it’s because this is the fourth MSHTML vulnerability found to be exploited in the wild so far in 2024.
Nikolas Cemerikic, a cybersecurity engineer at Immersive Labs, said the vulnerability allows an attacker to trick users into viewing malicious web content, which could appear legitimate thanks to the way Windows handles certain web elements.
“Once a user is deceived into interacting with this content (typically through phishing attacks), the attacker can potentially gain unauthorized access to sensitive information or manipulate web-based services,” he said.
Cemerikic noted that while Internet Explorer is being retired on many platforms, its underlying MSHTML technology remains active and vulnerable.
“This creates a risk for employees using these older systems as part of their everyday work, especially if they are accessing sensitive data or performing financial transactions online,” he said.
Probably the more serious zero-day this month is CVE-2024-43572, a code execution bug in the Microsoft Management Console, a component of Windows that gives system administrators a way to configure and monitor the system.
Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at Tenable, observed that the patch for CVE-2024-43572 arrived a few months after researchers at Elastic Security Labs disclosed an attack technique called GrimResource that leveraged an old cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability combined with a specially crafted Microsoft Saved Console (MSC) file to gain code execution privileges.
“Although Microsoft patched a different MMC vulnerability in September (CVE-2024-38259) that was neither exploited in the wild nor publicly disclosed,” Narang said. “Since the discovery of CVE-2024-43572, Microsoft now prevents untrusted MSC files from being opened on a system.”
Microsoft also patched Office, Azure, .NET, OpenSSH for Windows; Power BI; Windows Hyper-V; Windows Mobile Broadband, and Visual Studio. As usual, the SANS Internet Storm Center has a list of all Microsoft patches released today, indexed by severity and exploitability.
Late last month, Apple rolled out macOS 15, an operating system update called Sequoia that broke the functionality of security tools made by a number of vendors, including CrowdStrike, SentinelOne and Microsoft. On Oct. 7, Apple pushed an update to Sequoia users that addresses these compatibility issues.
Finally, Adobe has released security updates to plug a total of 52 vulnerabilities in a range of software, including Adobe Substance 3D Painter, Commerce, Dimension, Animate, Lightroom, InCopy, InDesign, Substance 3D Stager, and Adobe FrameMaker.
Please consider backing up important data before applying any updates. Zero-days aside, there’s generally little harm in waiting a few days to apply any pending patches, because not infrequently a security update introduces stability or compatibility issues. AskWoody.com usually has the skinny on any problematic patches.
And as always, if you run into any glitches after installing patches, leave a note in the comments; chances are someone else is stuck with the same issue and may have even found a solution.
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Are smartphones less secure than PCs? The answer to that is, they’re different. They face different security threats. Yet they certainly share one thing in common — they both need protection.
So, what makes a smartphone unique when it comes to security? And how do you go about protecting it? We’ll cover both here.
Several facts of life about smartphones set them apart when it comes to keeping your devices safer. A quick rundown looks like this:
First off, people keep lots of apps on their phones. Old ones, new ones, ones they practically forgot they had. The security issue that comes into play there is that any app on a phone is subject to vulnerabilities.
A vulnerability in just one of the dozens of apps on a phone can lead to problems. The adage of “the weakest link” applies here. The phone is only as secure as its least secure app. And that goes for the phone’s operating system as well.
Additionally, app permissions can also introduce risks. Apps often request access to different parts of your phone to work — such as when a messenger app asks for access to contacts and photos. In the case of malicious apps, they’ll ask for far more permissions than they need. A classic example involves the old “flashlight apps” that invasively asked for a wide swath of permissions. That gave the hackers all kinds of info on users, including things like location info. Today, the practice of malicious, permission-thirsty apps continues with wallpaper apps, utility apps, games, and more.
As for other malicious apps, sometimes people download them without knowing. This often happens when shopping in third-party app stores, yet it can happen in legit app stores as well — despite rigorous review processes from Apple and Google. Sometimes, hackers sneak them through the review process for approval. These apps might include spyware, ransomware, and other forms of malware.
Many people put their smartphones to personal and professional use.[i] That might mean the phone has access to corporate apps, networks, and data. If the phone gets compromised, those corporate assets might get compromised too. And it can work in the other direction. A corporate compromise might affect an employee’s smartphone.
More and more, our phones are our wallets. Digital wallets and payment apps have certainly gained popularity. They speed up checkout and make splitting meals with friends easy. That makes the prospect of a lost or stolen phone all the more serious. An unsecured phone in the hands of another is like forking over your wallet.
Lastly, spam texts. Unique to phones are the sketchy links that crop up in texting and messaging apps. These often lead to scam sites and other sites that spread malware.
With a good sense of what makes securing your smartphone unique, let’s look at several steps you can take to protect it.
Keeping your phone’s apps and operating system up to date can greatly improve your security. Updates can fix vulnerabilities that hackers rely on to pull off their malware-based attacks. it’s another tried and true method of keeping yourself safer — and for keeping your phone running great too.
With all that you keep and conduct on your phone, a lock is a must. Whether you have a PIN, passcode, or facial recognition available, put it into play. The same goes for things like your payment, banking, and financial apps. Ensure you have them locked too.
As mentioned above, app stores have measures in place to review and vet apps that help ensure they’re safe and secure. Third-party sites might very well not, and they might intentionally host malicious apps as part of a front. Further, legitimate app stores are quick to remove malicious apps from their stores once discovered, making shopping there safer still.
Check out the developer — have they published several other apps with many downloads and good reviews? A legit app typically has many reviews. In contrast, malicious apps might have only a handful of (phony) five-star reviews. Lastly, look for typos and poor grammar in both the app description and screenshots. They could be a sign that a hacker slapped the app together and quickly deployed it.
Yet better than combing through user reviews yourself is getting a recommendation from a trusted source, like a well-known publication or app store editors themselves. In this case, much of the vetting work has been done for you by an established reviewer. A quick online search like “best fitness apps” or “best apps for travelers” should turn up articles from legitimate sites that can suggest good options and describe them in detail before you download.
Another way hackers weasel their way into your device is by getting permissions to access things like your location, contacts, and photos — and they’ll use malicious apps to do it. If an app asks for way more than you bargained for, like a simple puzzle game that asks for access to your camera or microphone, it might be a scam. Delete the app.
So what happens if your phone ends up getting lost or stolen? A combination of device tracking, device locking, and remote erasing can help protect your phone and the data on it. Different device manufacturers have different ways of going about it, but the result is the same — you can prevent others from using your phone. You can even erase it if you’re truly worried that it’s gone for good. Apple provides iOS users with a step-by-step guide, and Google offers a guide for Android users as well.
Comprehensive online protection software can secure your phone in the same ways that it secures your laptops and computers. Installing it can protect your privacy, and keep you safe from attacks on public Wi-Fi, just to name a few things it can do. Ours also includes Text Scam Detector that blocks sketchy links in texts, messages, and email before they do you any harm. And if you tap that link by mistake, Text Scam Detector still blocks it.
[i] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1147490/share-adults-use-personal-smartphone-business-activities-by-country/
The post Are Mobile Devices Less Secure than PCs? appeared first on McAfee Blog.
If only Patch Tuesdays came around infrequently — like total solar eclipse rare — instead of just creeping up on us each month like The Man in the Moon. Although to be fair, it would be tough for Microsoft to eclipse the number of vulnerabilities fixed in this month’s patch batch — a record 147 flaws in Windows and related software.
Yes, you read that right. Microsoft today released updates to address 147 security holes in Windows, Office, Azure, .NET Framework, Visual Studio, SQL Server, DNS Server, Windows Defender, Bitlocker, and Windows Secure Boot.
“This is the largest release from Microsoft this year and the largest since at least 2017,” said Dustin Childs, from Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI). “As far as I can tell, it’s the largest Patch Tuesday release from Microsoft of all time.”
Tempering the sheer volume of this month’s patches is the middling severity of many of the bugs. Only three of April’s vulnerabilities earned Microsoft’s most-dire “critical” rating, meaning they can be abused by malware or malcontents to take remote control over unpatched systems with no help from users.
Most of the flaws that Microsoft deems “more likely to be exploited” this month are marked as “important,” which usually involve bugs that require a bit more user interaction (social engineering) but which nevertheless can result in system security bypass, compromise, and the theft of critical assets.
Ben McCarthy, lead cyber security engineer at Immersive Labs called attention to CVE-2024-20670, an Outlook for Windows spoofing vulnerability described as being easy to exploit. It involves convincing a user to click on a malicious link in an email, which can then steal the user’s password hash and authenticate as the user in another Microsoft service.
Another interesting bug McCarthy pointed to is CVE-2024-29063, which involves hard-coded credentials in Azure’s search backend infrastructure that could be gleaned by taking advantage of Azure AI search.
“This along with many other AI attacks in recent news shows a potential new attack surface that we are just learning how to mitigate against,” McCarthy said. “Microsoft has updated their backend and notified any customers who have been affected by the credential leakage.”
CVE-2024-29988 is a weakness that allows attackers to bypass Windows SmartScreen, a technology Microsoft designed to provide additional protections for end users against phishing and malware attacks. Childs said one of ZDI’s researchers found this vulnerability being exploited in the wild, although Microsoft doesn’t currently list CVE-2024-29988 as being exploited.
“I would treat this as in the wild until Microsoft clarifies,” Childs said. “The bug itself acts much like CVE-2024-21412 – a [zero-day threat from February] that bypassed the Mark of the Web feature and allows malware to execute on a target system. Threat actors are sending exploits in a zipped file to evade EDR/NDR detection and then using this bug (and others) to bypass Mark of the Web.”
Update, 7:46 p.m. ET: A previous version of this story said there were no zero-day vulnerabilities fixed this month. BleepingComputer reports that Microsoft has since confirmed that there are actually two zero-days. One is the flaw Childs just mentioned (CVE-2024-21412), and the other is CVE-2024-26234, described as a “proxy driver spoofing” weakness.
Satnam Narang at Tenable notes that this month’s release includes fixes for two dozen flaws in Windows Secure Boot, the majority of which are considered “Exploitation Less Likely” according to Microsoft.
“However, the last time Microsoft patched a flaw in Windows Secure Boot in May 2023 had a notable impact as it was exploited in the wild and linked to the BlackLotus UEFI bootkit, which was sold on dark web forums for $5,000,” Narang said. “BlackLotus can bypass functionality called secure boot, which is designed to block malware from being able to load when booting up. While none of these Secure Boot vulnerabilities addressed this month were exploited in the wild, they serve as a reminder that flaws in Secure Boot persist, and we could see more malicious activity related to Secure Boot in the future.”
For links to individual security advisories indexed by severity, check out ZDI’s blog and the Patch Tuesday post from the SANS Internet Storm Center. Please consider backing up your data or your drive before updating, and drop a note in the comments here if you experience any issues applying these fixes.
Adobe today released nine patches tackling at least two dozen vulnerabilities in a range of software products, including Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Commerce, InDesign, Experience Manager, Media Encoder, Bridge, Illustrator, and Adobe Animate.
KrebsOnSecurity needs to correct the record on a point mentioned at the end of March’s “Fat Patch Tuesday” post, which looked at new AI capabilities built into Adobe Acrobat that are turned on by default. Adobe has since clarified that its apps won’t use AI to auto-scan your documents, as the original language in its FAQ suggested.
“In practice, no document scanning or analysis occurs unless a user actively engages with the AI features by agreeing to the terms, opening a document, and selecting the AI Assistant or generative summary buttons for that specific document,” Adobe said earlier this month.
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Internet shopping has become an integral part of our daily lives, providing convenience, variety, and easy price comparisons. However, with this convenience comes potential risks. This article explores the dos and don’ts of online shopping to help you navigate this virtual marketplace safely and effectively.
Online shopping offers an amazing array of benefits. It saves time and effort, provides a platform where product comparison becomes a breeze, and allows us to avoid queues and crowds. Not to mention – it’s open all day, every day. However, it also exposes consumers to cyber threats, misinformation, and poor quality or non-existent products. This is why it is crucial to follow certain guidelines when buying online.
In this article, we will explore various dos and don’ts of online shopping centered around security, payment methods, product audits, return policies, and online behavior. The ultimate goal is to help you become a savvy, risk-aware internet shopper.
To make the most of your online shopping experience and secure your transactions, it’s crucial to adhere to some essential ‘do’s. These simple guidelines not only enhance your safety and satisfaction but also ensure a seamless and enjoyable transaction process.
Your first line of defense when shopping online should be to stick to well-known and trusted retailers. These retailers have established secure online shopping platforms and have robust security measures in place. They also typically have reliable customer support and return policies that protect you as the buyer. Online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba also provide customer protection mechanisms for purchases made through their platforms.
However, this does not mean you should completely avoid lesser-known online stores. Many fantastic independent retailers sell online exclusively. The key is to conduct a bit of research on these stores before handing over your money. A quick Google search can help you find reviews and ratings from other customers.
→ Dig Deeper: 8 Ways to Know If Online Stores Are Safe and Legit
Another important tip for safe online shopping is to use secure payment methods. Credit cards and secure online payment services, such as PayPal, have added security measures that protect you from fraud. Such services also often provide dispute resolution services in case something goes wrong with your transaction. When using a credit card, make sure you monitor your statements regularly for any suspicious charges.
→ Dig Deeper: PayPal Users: Here’s What You Need to Know About the New Phishing Scam
Furthermore, avoid using debit cards for online shopping as they lack many of the protections that credit cards provide. If a scammer gains access to your debit card information, they may have the ability to drain your bank account before you even notice.
McAfee Pro Tip: Do you use a digital wallet for online purchases? A digital wallet, or mobile wallet, is a smartphone app that securely stores payment information for tap-to-pay transactions at most point-of-sale terminals. Your digital wallet is secure as long as you safeguard your smartphone with the same level of attention as you would your physical wallet. If you use one, we have some tips to improve your digital wallet’s security.
One fundamental practice to uphold security is to exclusively patronize secure websites. These are platforms that have implemented robust measures to protect the confidentiality and integrity of the data exchanged during your online interactions. Shop only on secure websites that have a valid SSL certificate. Look for “https://” in the URL and a padlock icon in the address bar to ensure your personal information is protected.
The importance of using unique passwords for each online account cannot be overstated. In the event that one of your passwords is compromised, having distinct credentials for different platforms ensures that the security breach is contained, limiting potential damage. Reusing passwords across multiple accounts creates a vulnerability where a single compromised password could lead to unauthorized access to various aspects of your digital life.
Use a strong password, one that combines a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols and creates a complex sequence that is challenging for malicious actors or automated programs to decipher. Avoid easily guessable information such as birthdays, names, or common words.
Understanding the “Don’ts of Online Shopping” is as crucial as embracing the dos. From avoiding potential pitfalls to safeguarding your personal information, these guidelines serve as a compass, steering you away from common missteps that could compromise your online shopping journey.
Public Wi-Fi networks may be convenient, but they are often insecure. This makes it easy for cybercriminals to intercept your data, including credit card information or login details. So, as a rule of thumb, avoid making online purchases when you’re connected to public Wi-Fi.
→ Dig Deeper: Why You Need to Watch Out When Using Public Wi-Fi
Remember also to be cautious about which websites you visit and what personal information you provide while on public Wi-Fi. Even seemingly harmless activities, like checking email, can expose you to risks if a hacker is spying on your connection.
While shopping online, you might run into deals that seem too good to be true – and often, they are. Extremely low prices can be a sign of a scam, especially if they’re found on an obscure website. Be wary of online stores that require payment via wire transfer, provide vague or non-existent contact information, or have lots of negative reviews.
Keeping your devices, such as your computer, smartphone, or tablet, updated with the latest software is a simple but effective way to maintain a secure online shopping environment. Software updates often include patches for security vulnerabilities that have been discovered by the developers. By not updating your software, you are leaving your devices open to these vulnerabilities, which can be exploited by cybercriminals. Hence, always ensure that your devices are running the latest software versions.
In case of mobile devices, consider installing a trusted security app to help protect you from potential threats. These apps can help detect malware, prevent phishing attempts, and provide a host of other security features to keep you safe while shopping online.
→ Dig Deeper: Why Software Updates Are So Important
If you must shop online while on a public network, use a virtual private network (VPN) to encrypt your activity. A VPN is a tool that can provide an extra layer of security when you are shopping online. A VPN encrypts your internet connection, making your online activity invisible to anyone who might be snooping around, including hackers, your Internet Service Provider (ISP), or even the government. This can especially come in handy when you are shopping on a public Wi-Fi network, as mentioned earlier.
However, it’s important to choose a VPN carefully. Some VPNs can slow down your internet connection significantly or, worse, fail to provide the promised security features. Hence, always opt for a well-renowned and trusted VPN service provider.’
Return and refund policies are something you should never ignore while shopping online. These policies clarify what you can expect if the product turns out to be unsatisfactory, defective, or not as described. So, before making a purchase, always take the time to read and understand the return or refund policy of the online store. Avoid shopping from sites that have unclear, unfair, or non-existent return policies, as this could leave you stuck with unsatisfactory products.
Additionally, always print or save a copy of your order confirmation and receipt. This can be crucial for returning a product or disputing a charge in your credit card statement.
Phishing is a common online scam where cybercriminals trick you into providing sensitive information, such as your credit card details, by pretending to be a trustworthy entity. Often, these scams come in the form of fake emails or texts that look like they’re from reputable companies. Be wary of such communication, especially if it asks for personal or financial details.
Always verify whether the email or text is genuine by contacting the company through their official contact details. Never click on links from suspicious emails as this can also lead to malicious websites designed to steal your information. Remember, reputable companies will never ask for sensitive information through emails or texts.
Online shopping can be a convenient and enjoyable experience, but it also comes with its own set of risks. By following the dos and don’ts highlighted in this article, you can drastically reduce these risks and safeguard yourself from potential cyber threats. Remember to always stay vigilant while shopping online. Be aware of the common scams, stick to trusted retailers, and always protect your personal and financial information.
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The post Online Shopping: The Dos and Don’ts appeared first on McAfee Blog.
Domain names ending in “.US” — the top-level domain for the United States — are among the most prevalent in phishing scams, new research shows. This is noteworthy because .US is overseen by the U.S. government, which is frequently the target of phishing domains ending in .US. Also, .US domains are only supposed to be available to U.S. citizens and to those who can demonstrate that they have a physical presence in the United States.
.US is the “country code top-level domain” or ccTLD of the United States. Most countries have their own ccTLDs: .MX for Mexico, for example, or .CA for Canada. But few other major countries in the world have anywhere near as many phishing domains each year as .US.
That’s according to The Interisle Consulting Group, which gathers phishing data from multiple industry sources and publishes an annual report on the latest trends. Interisle’s newest study examined six million phishing reports between May 1, 2022 and April 30, 2023, and found 30,000 .US phishing domains.
.US is overseen by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an executive branch agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. However, NTIA currently contracts out the management of the .US domain to GoDaddy, by far the world’s largest domain registrar.
Under NTIA regulations, the administrator of the .US registry must take certain steps to verify that their customers actually reside in the United States, or own organizations based in the U.S. But Interisle found that whatever GoDaddy was doing to manage that vetting process wasn’t working.
“The .US ‘nexus’ requirement theoretically limits registrations to parties with a national connection, but .US had very high numbers of phishing domains,” Interisle wrote. “This indicates a possible problem with the administration or application of the nexus requirements.”
Dean Marks is emeritus executive director for a group called the Coalition for Online Accountability, which has been critical of the NTIA’s stewardship of .US. Marks says virtually all European Union member state ccTLDs that enforce nexus restrictions also have massively lower levels of abuse due to their policies and oversight.
“Even very large ccTLDs, like .de for Germany — which has a far larger market share of domain name registrations than .US — have very low levels of abuse, including phishing and malware,” Marks told KrebsOnSecurity. “In my view, this situation with .US should not be acceptable to the U.S. government overall, nor to the US public.”
Marks said there are very few phishing domains ever registered in other ccTLDs that also restrict registrations to their citizens, such as .HU (Hungary), .NZ (New Zealand), and .FI (Finland), where a connection to the country, a proof of identity, or evidence of incorporation are required.
“Or .LK (Sri Lanka), where the acceptable use policy includes a ‘lock and suspend’ if domains are reported for suspicious activity,” Marks said. “These ccTLDs make a strong case for validating domain registrants in the interest of public safety.”
Sadly, .US has been a cesspool of phishing activity for many years. As far back as 2018, Interisle found .US domains were the worst in the world for spam, botnet (attack infrastructure for DDOS etc.) and illicit or harmful content. Back then, .US was being operated by a different contractor.
In response to questions from KrebsOnSecurity, GoDaddy said all .US registrants must certify that they meet the NTIA’s nexus requirements. But this appears to be little more than an affirmative response that is already pre-selected for all new registrants.
Attempting to register a .US domain through GoDaddy, for example, leads to a U.S. Registration Information page that auto-populates the nexus attestation field with the response, “I am a citizen of the US.” Other options include, “I am a permanent resident of the US,” and “My primary domicile is in the US.” It currently costs just $4.99 to obtain a .US domain through GoDaddy.
GoDaddy said it also conducts a scan of selected registration request information, and conducts “spot checks” on registrant information.
“We conduct regular reviews, per policy, of registration data within the Registry database to determine Nexus compliance with ongoing communications to registrars and registrants,” the company said in a written statement.
GoDaddy says it “is committed to supporting a safer online environment and proactively addressing this issue by assessing it against our own anti-abuse mitigation system.”
“We stand against DNS abuse in any form and maintain multiple systems and protocols to protect all the TLDs we operate,” the statement continued. “We will continue to work with registrars, cybersecurity firms and other stakeholders to make progress with this complex challenge.”
Interisle found significant numbers of .US domains were registered to attack some of the United States’ most prominent companies, including Bank of America, Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Citi, Comcast, Microsoft, Meta, and Target.
“Ironically, at least 109 of the .US domains in our data were used to attack the United States government, specifically the United States Postal Service and its customers,” Interisle wrote. “.US domains were also used to attack foreign government operations: six .US domains were used to attack Australian government services, six attacked Great’s Britain’s Royal Mail, one attacked Canada Post, and one attacked the Denmark Tax Authority.”
The NTIA recently published a proposal that would allow GoDaddy to redact registrant data from WHOIS registration records. The current charter for .US specifies that all .US registration records be public.
Interisle argues that without more stringent efforts to verify a United States nexus for new .US domain registrants, the NTIA’s proposal will make it even more difficult to identify phishers and verify registrants’ identities and nexus qualifications.
In a written statement, the NTIA said DNS abuse is a priority issue for the agency, and that NTIA supports “evidence-based policymaking.”
“We look forward to reviewing the report and will engage with our contractor for the .US domain on steps that we can take not only to address phishing, but the other forms of DNS abuse as well,” the statement reads.
Interisle sources its phishing data from several places, including the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), OpenPhish, PhishTank, and Spamhaus. For more phishing facts, see Interisle’s 2023 Phishing Landscape report (PDF).’
Update, Sept. 5, 1:44 p.m. ET: Updated story with statement provided today by the NTIA.
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