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☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

MDR is the answer – now, what’s the question?

— November 24th 2025 at 10:00
Why your business needs the best-of-breed combination of technology and human expertise
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Amazon Is Using Specialized AI Agents for Deep Bug Hunting

By: Lily Hay Newman — November 24th 2025 at 14:00
Born out of an internal hackathon, Amazon’s Autonomous Threat Analysis system uses a variety of specialized AI agents to detect weaknesses and propose fixes to the company’s platforms.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

4 People Indicted in Alleged Conspiracy to Smuggle Supercomputers and Nvidia Chips to China

By: Paresh Dave — November 20th 2025 at 22:26
A federal prosecutor alleged that one defendant boasted that his father “had engaged in similar business for the Chinese Communist Party.”
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Why shadow AI could be your biggest security blind spot

— November 11th 2025 at 10:00
From unintentional data leakage to buggy code, here’s why you should care about unsanctioned AI use in your company
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Scam Ads Are Flooding Social Media. These Former Meta Staffers Have a Plan

By: Craig Silverman — November 6th 2025 at 11:30
Rob Leathern and Rob Goldman, who both worked at Meta, are launching a new nonprofit that aims to bring transparency to an increasingly opaque, scam-filled social media ecosystem.
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Ground zero: 5 things to do after discovering a cyberattack

— November 3rd 2025 at 10:00
When every minute counts, preparation and precision can mean the difference between disruption and disaster
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Recruitment red flags: Can you spot a spy posing as a job seeker?

— October 28th 2025 at 10:00
Here’s what to know about a recent spin on an insider threat – fake North Korean IT workers infiltrating western firms
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

How MDR can give MSPs the edge in a competitive market

— October 27th 2025 at 10:00
With cybersecurity talent in short supply and threats evolving fast, managed detection and response is emerging as a strategic necessity for MSPs
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

IT service desks: The security blind spot that may put your business at risk

— October 15th 2025 at 09:00
Could a simple call to the helpdesk enable threat actors to bypass your security controls? Here’s how your team can close a growing security gap.
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

The case for cybersecurity: Why successful businesses are built on protection

— October 7th 2025 at 09:00
Company leaders need to recognize the gravity of cyber risk, turn awareness into action, and put security front and center
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Manufacturing under fire: Strengthening cyber-defenses amid surging threats

— October 3rd 2025 at 09:00
Manufacturers operate in one of the most unforgiving threat environments and face a unique set of pressures that make attacks particularly damaging
☐ ☆ ✇ Krebs on Security

Alleged Jabber Zeus Coder ‘MrICQ’ in U.S. Custody

By: BrianKrebs — November 2nd 2025 at 20:37

A Ukrainian man indicted in 2012 for conspiring with a prolific hacking group to steal tens of millions of dollars from U.S. businesses was arrested in Italy and is now in custody in the United States, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.

Sources close to the investigation say Yuriy Igorevich Rybtsov, a 41-year-old from the Russia-controlled city of Donetsk, Ukraine, was previously referenced in U.S. federal charging documents only by his online handle “MrICQ.” According to a 13-year-old indictment (PDF) filed by prosecutors in Nebraska, MrICQ was a developer for a cybercrime group known as “Jabber Zeus.”

Image: lockedup dot wtf.

The Jabber Zeus name is derived from the malware they used — a custom version of the ZeuS banking trojan — that stole banking login credentials and would send the group a Jabber instant message each time a new victim entered a one-time passcode at a financial institution website. The gang targeted mostly small to mid-sized businesses, and they were an early pioneer of so-called “man-in-the-browser” attacks, malware that can silently intercept any data that victims submit in a web-based form.

Once inside a victim company’s accounts, the Jabber Zeus crew would modify the firm’s payroll to add dozens of “money mules,” people recruited through elaborate work-at-home schemes to handle bank transfers. The mules in turn would forward any stolen payroll deposits — minus their commissions — via wire transfers to other mules in Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

The 2012 indictment targeting the Jabber Zeus crew named MrICQ as “John Doe #3,” and said this person handled incoming notifications of newly compromised victims. The Department of Justice (DOJ) said MrICQ also helped the group launder the proceeds of their heists through electronic currency exchange services.

Two sources familiar with the Jabber Zeus investigation said Rybtsov was arrested in Italy, although the exact date and circumstances of his arrest remain unclear. A summary of recent decisions (PDF) published by the Italian Supreme Court states that in April 2025, Rybtsov lost a final appeal to avoid extradition to the United States.

According to the mugshot website lockedup[.]wtf, Rybtsov arrived in Nebraska on October 9, and was being held under an arrest warrant from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The data breach tracking service Constella Intelligence found breached records from the business profiling site bvdinfo[.]com showing that a 41-year-old Yuriy Igorevich Rybtsov worked in a building at 59 Barnaulska St. in Donetsk. Further searching on this address in Constella finds the same apartment building was shared by a business registered to Vyacheslav “Tank” Penchukov, the leader of the Jabber Zeus crew in Ukraine.

Vyacheslav “Tank” Penchukov, seen here performing as “DJ Slava Rich” in Ukraine, in an undated photo from social media.

Penchukov was arrested in 2022 while traveling to meet his wife in Switzerland. Last year, a federal court in Nebraska sentenced Penchukov to 18 years in prison and ordered him to pay more than $73 million in restitution.

Lawrence Baldwin is founder of myNetWatchman, a threat intelligence company based in Georgia that began tracking and disrupting the Jabber Zeus gang in 2009. myNetWatchman had secretly gained access to the Jabber chat server used by the Ukrainian hackers, allowing Baldwin to eavesdrop on the daily conversations between MrICQ and other Jabber Zeus members.

Baldwin shared those real-time chat records with multiple state and federal law enforcement agencies, and with this reporter. Between 2010 and 2013, I spent several hours each day alerting small businesses across the country that their payroll accounts were about to be drained by these cybercriminals.

Those notifications, and Baldwin’s tireless efforts, saved countless would-be victims a great deal of money. In most cases, however, we were already too late. Nevertheless, the pilfered Jabber Zeus group chats provided the basis for dozens of stories published here about small businesses fighting their banks in court over six- and seven-figure financial losses.

Baldwin said the Jabber Zeus crew was far ahead of its peers in several respects. For starters, their intercepted chats showed they worked to create a highly customized botnet directly with the author of the original Zeus Trojan — Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev, a Russian man who has long been on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list. The feds have a standing $3 million reward for information leading to Bogachev’s arrest.

Evgeniy M. Bogachev, in undated photos.

The core innovation of Jabber Zeus was an alert that MrICQ would receive each time a new victim entered a one-time password code into a phishing page mimicking their financial institution. The gang’s internal name for this component was “Leprechaun,” (the video below from myNetWatchman shows it in action). Jabber Zeus would actually re-write the HTML code as displayed in the victim’s browser, allowing them to intercept any passcodes sent by the victim’s bank for multi-factor authentication.

“These guys had compromised such a large number of victims that they were getting buried in a tsunami of stolen banking credentials,” Baldwin told KrebsOnSecurity. “But the whole point of Leprechaun was to isolate the highest-value credentials — the commercial bank accounts with two-factor authentication turned on. They knew these were far juicier targets because they clearly had a lot more money to protect.”

Baldwin said the Jabber Zeus trojan also included a custom “backconnect” component that allowed the hackers to relay their bank account takeovers through the victim’s own infected PC.

“The Jabber Zeus crew were literally connecting to the victim’s bank account from the victim’s IP address, or from the remote control function and by fully emulating the device,” he said. “That trojan was like a hot knife through butter of what everyone thought was state-of-the-art secure online banking at the time.”

Although the Jabber Zeus crew was in direct contact with the Zeus author, the chats intercepted by myNetWatchman show Bogachev frequently ignored the group’s pleas for help. The government says the real leader of the Jabber Zeus crew was Maksim Yakubets, a 38-year Ukrainian man with Russian citizenship who went by the hacker handle “Aqua.”

Alleged Evil Corp leader Maksim “Aqua” Yakubets. Image: FBI

The Jabber chats intercepted by Baldwin show that Aqua interacted almost daily with MrICQ, Tank and other members of the hacking team, often facilitating the group’s money mule and cashout activities remotely from Russia.

The government says Yakubets/Aqua would later emerge as the leader of an elite cybercrime ring of at least 17 hackers that referred to themselves internally as “Evil Corp.” Members of Evil Corp developed and used the Dridex (a.k.a. Bugat) trojan, which helped them siphon more than $100 million from hundreds of victim companies in the United States and Europe.

This 2019 story about the government’s $5 million bounty for information leading to Yakubets’s arrest includes excerpts of conversations between Aqua, Tank, Bogachev and other Jabber Zeus crew members discussing stories I’d written about their victims. Both Baldwin and I were interviewed at length for a new weekly six-part podcast by the BBC that delves deep into the history of Evil Corp. Episode One focuses on the evolution of Zeus, while the second episode centers on an investigation into the group by former FBI agent Jim Craig.

Image: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct89y8

☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Chatbots Are Pushing Sanctioned Russian Propaganda

By: Matt Burgess, Natasha Bernal — October 27th 2025 at 09:00
ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok are serving users propaganda from Russian-backed media when asked about the invasion of Ukraine, new research finds.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Anthropic Has a Plan to Keep Its AI From Building a Nuclear Weapon. Will It Work?

By: Matthew Gault — October 20th 2025 at 09:00
Anthropic partnered with the US government to create a filter meant to block Claude from helping someone build a nuke. Experts are divided on whether its a necessary protection—or a protection at all.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Feds Seize Record-Breaking $15 Billion in Bitcoin From Alleged Scam Empire

By: Matt Burgess, Andy Greenberg — October 14th 2025 at 17:34
Officials in the US and UK have taken sweeping action against “one of the largest investment fraud operations in history,” confiscating a historic amount of funds in the process.
☐ ☆ ✇ Krebs on Security

ShinyHunters Wage Broad Corporate Extortion Spree

By: BrianKrebs — October 7th 2025 at 22:45

A cybercriminal group that used voice phishing attacks to siphon more than a billion records from Salesforce customers earlier this year has launched a website that threatens to publish data stolen from dozens of Fortune 500 firms if they refuse to pay a ransom. The group also claimed responsibility for a recent breach involving Discord user data, and for stealing terabytes of sensitive files from thousands of customers of the enterprise software maker Red Hat.

The new extortion website tied to ShinyHunters (UNC6040), which threatens to publish stolen data unless Salesforce or individual victim companies agree to pay a ransom.

In May 2025, a prolific and amorphous English-speaking cybercrime group known as ShinyHunters launched a social engineering campaign that used voice phishing to trick targets into connecting a malicious app to their organization’s Salesforce portal.

The first real details about the incident came in early June, when the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) warned that ShinyHunters — tracked by Google as UNC6040 — was extorting victims over their stolen Salesforce data, and that the group was poised to launch a data leak site to publicly shame victim companies into paying a ransom to keep their records private. A month later, Google acknowledged that one of its own corporate Salesforce instances was impacted in the voice phishing campaign.

Last week, a new victim shaming blog dubbed “Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters” began publishing the names of companies that had customer Salesforce data stolen as a result of the May voice phishing campaign.

“Contact us to negotiate this ransom or all your customers data will be leaked,” the website stated in a message to Salesforce. “If we come to a resolution all individual extortions against your customers will be withdrawn from. Nobody else will have to pay us, if you pay, Salesforce, Inc.”

Below that message were more than three dozen entries for companies that allegedly had Salesforce data stolen, including Toyota, FedEx, Disney/Hulu, and UPS. The entries for each company specified the volume of stolen data available, as well as the date that the information was retrieved (the stated breach dates range between May and September 2025).

Image: Mandiant.

On October 5, the Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters victim shaming and extortion blog announced that the group was responsible for a breach in September involving a GitLab server used by Red Hat that contained more than 28,000 Git code repositories, including more than 5,000 Customer Engagement Reports (CERs).

“Alot of folders have their client’s secrets such as artifactory access tokens, git tokens, azure, docker (redhat docker, azure containers, dockerhub), their client’s infrastructure details in the CERs like the audits that were done for them, and a whole LOT more, etc.,” the hackers claimed.

Their claims came several days after a previously unknown hacker group calling itself the Crimson Collective took credit for the Red Hat intrusion on Telegram.

Red Hat disclosed on October 2 that attackers had compromised a company GitLab server, and said it was in the process of notifying affected customers.

“The compromised GitLab instance housed consulting engagement data, which may include, for example, Red Hat’s project specifications, example code snippets, internal communications about consulting services, and limited forms of business contact information,” Red Hat wrote.

Separately, Discord has started emailing users affected by another breach claimed by ShinyHunters. Discord said an incident on September 20 at a “third-party customer service provider” impacted a “limited number of users” who communicated with Discord customer support or Trust & Safety teams. The information included Discord usernames, emails, IP address, the last four digits of any stored payment cards, and government ID images submitted during age verification appeals.

The Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters claim they will publish data stolen from Salesforce and its customers if ransom demands aren’t paid by October 10. The group also claims it will soon begin extorting hundreds more organizations that lost data in August after a cybercrime group stole vast amounts of authentication tokens from Salesloft, whose AI chatbot is used by many corporate websites to convert customer interaction into Salesforce leads.

In a communication sent to customers today, Salesforce emphasized that the theft of any third-party Salesloft data allegedly stolen by ShinyHunters did not originate from a vulnerability within the core Salesforce platform. The company also stressed that it has no plans to meet any extortion demands.

“Salesforce will not engage, negotiate with, or pay any extortion demand,” the message to customers read. “Our focus is, and remains, on defending our environment, conducting thorough forensic analysis, supporting our customers, and working with law enforcement and regulatory authorities.”

The GTIG tracked the group behind the Salesloft data thefts as UNC6395, and says the group has been observed harvesting the data for authentication tokens tied to a range of cloud services like Snowflake and Amazon’s AWS.

Google catalogs Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters by so many UNC names (throw in UNC6240 for good measure) because it is thought to be an amalgamation of three hacking groups — Scattered Spider, Lapsus$ and ShinyHunters. The members of these groups hail from many of the same chat channels on the Com, a mostly English-language cybercriminal community that operates across an ocean of Telegram and Discord servers.

The Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters darknet blog is currently offline. The outage appears to have coincided with the disappearance of the group’s new clearnet blog — breachforums[.]hn — which vanished after shifting its Domain Name Service (DNS) servers from DDoS-Guard to Cloudflare.

But before it died, the websites disclosed that hackers were exploiting a critical zero-day vulnerability in Oracle’s E-Business Suite software. Oracle has since confirmed that a security flaw tracked as CVE-2025-61882 allows attackers to perform unauthenticated remote code execution, and is urging customers to apply an emergency update to address the weakness.

Mandiant’s Charles Carmakal shared on LinkedIn that CVE-2025-61882 was initially exploited in August 2025 by the Clop ransomware gang to steal data from Oracle E-Business Suite servers. Bleeping Computer writes that news of the Oracle zero-day first surfaced on the Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters blog, which published a pair of scripts that were used to exploit vulnerable Oracle E-Business Suite instances.

On Monday evening, KrebsOnSecurity received a malware-laced message from a reader that threatened physical violence unless their unstated demands were met. The missive, titled “Shiny hunters,” contained the hashtag $LAPSU$$SCATEREDHUNTER, and urged me to visit a page on limewire[.]com to view their demands.

A screenshot of the phishing message linking to a malicious trojan disguised as a Windows screensaver file.

KrebsOnSecurity did not visit this link, but instead forwarded it to Mandiant, which confirmed that similar menacing missives were sent to employees at Mandiant and other security firms around the same time.

The link in the message fetches a malicious trojan disguised as a Windows screensaver file (Virustotal’s analysis on this malware is here). Simply viewing the booby-trapped screensaver on a Windows PC is enough to cause the bundled trojan to launch in the background.

Mandiant’s Austin Larsen said the trojan is a commercially available backdoor known as ASYNCRAT, a .NET-based backdoor that communicates using a custom binary protocol over TCP, and can execute shell commands and download plugins to extend its features.

A scan of the malicious screensaver file at Virustotal.com shows it is detected as bad by nearly a dozen security and antivirus tools.

“Downloaded plugins may be executed directly in memory or stored in the registry,” Larsen wrote in an analysis shared via email. “Capabilities added via plugins include screenshot capture, file transfer, keylogging, video capture, and cryptocurrency mining. ASYNCRAT also supports a plugin that targets credentials stored by Firefox and Chromium-based web browsers.”

Malware-laced targeted emails are not out of character for certain members of the Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, who have previously harassed and threatened security researchers and even law enforcement officials who are investigating and warning about the extent of their attacks.

With so many big data breaches and ransom attacks now coming from cybercrime groups operating on the Com, law enforcement agencies on both sides of the pond are under increasing pressure to apprehend the criminal hackers involved. In late September, prosecutors in the U.K. charged two alleged Scattered Spider members aged 18 and 19 with extorting at least $115 million in ransom payments from companies victimized by data theft.

U.S. prosecutors heaped their own charges on the 19 year-old in that duo — U.K. resident Thalha Jubair — who is alleged to have been involved in data ransom attacks against Marks & Spencer and Harrods, the British food retailer Co-op Group, and the 2023 intrusions at MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment. Jubair also was allegedly a key member of LAPSUS$, a cybercrime group that broke into dozens of technology companies beginning in late 2021.

A Mastodon post by Kevin Beaumont, lamenting the prevalence of major companies paying millions to extortionist teen hackers, refers derisively to Thalha Jubair as a part of an APT threat known as “Advanced Persistent Teenagers.”

In August, convicted Scattered Spider member and 20-year-old Florida man Noah Michael Urban was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison and ordered to pay roughly $13 million in restitution to victims.

In April 2025, a 23-year-old Scottish man thought to be an early Scattered Spider member was extradited from Spain to the U.S., where he is facing charges of wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft. U.S. prosecutors allege Tyler Robert Buchanan and co-conspirators hacked into dozens of companies in the United States and abroad, and that he personally controlled more than $26 million stolen from victims.

Update, Oct. 8, 8:59 a.m. ET: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to the malware sent by the reader as a Windows screenshot file. Rather, it is a Windows screensaver file.

☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Vibe Coding Is the New Open Source—in the Worst Way Possible

By: Lily Hay Newman — October 6th 2025 at 10:00
As developers increasingly lean on AI-generated code to build out their software—as they have with open source in the past—they risk introducing critical security failures along the way.
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Small businesses, big targets: Protecting your business against ransomware

— September 18th 2025 at 09:00
Long known to be a sweet spot for cybercriminals, small businesses are more likely to be victimized by ransomware than large enterprises
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Are cybercriminals hacking your systems – or just logging in?

— September 11th 2025 at 08:55
As bad actors often simply waltz through companies’ digital front doors with a key, here’s how to keep your own door locked tight
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

How China’s Propaganda and Surveillance Systems Really Operate

By: Zeyi Yang, Louise Matsakis — September 11th 2025 at 19:59
A series of corporate leaks show that Chinese technology companies function far more like their Western peers than one might imagine.
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Preventing business disruption and building cyber-resilience with MDR

— September 9th 2025 at 09:00
Given the serious financial and reputational risks of incidents that grind business to a halt, organizations need to prioritize a prevention-first cybersecurity strategy
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Under lock and key: Safeguarding business data with encryption

— September 5th 2025 at 08:53
As the attack surface expands and the threat landscape grows more complex, it’s time to consider whether your data protection strategy is fit for purpose
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

The Era of AI-Generated Ransomware Has Arrived

By: Lily Hay Newman, Matt Burgess — August 27th 2025 at 12:36
Cybercriminals are increasingly using generative AI tools to fuel their attacks, with new research finding instances of AI being used to develop ransomware.
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

The need for speed: Why organizations are turning to rapid, trustworthy MDR

— August 19th 2025 at 09:00
How top-tier managed detection and response (MDR) can help organizations stay ahead of increasingly agile and determined adversaries
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Supply-chain dependencies: Check your resilience blind spot

— August 12th 2025 at 14:08
Does your business truly understand its dependencies, and how to mitigate the risks posed by an attack on them?
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

What Does Palantir Actually Do?

By: Caroline Haskins — August 11th 2025 at 11:00
Palantir is often called a data broker, a data miner, or a giant database of personal information. In reality, it’s none of these—but even former employees struggle to explain it.
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Black Hat USA 2025: Is a high cyber insurance premium about your risk, or your insurer’s?

— August 8th 2025 at 14:25
A sky-high premium may not always reflect your company’s security posture
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Black Hat USA 2025: Policy compliance and the myth of the silver bullet

— August 7th 2025 at 16:03
Who’s to blame when the AI tool managing a company’s compliance status gets it wrong?
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Black Hat USA 2025: Does successful cybersecurity today increase cyber-risk tomorrow?

— August 7th 2025 at 14:23
Success in cybersecurity is when nothing happens, plus other standout themes from two of the event’s keynotes
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

A Single Poisoned Document Could Leak ‘Secret’ Data Via ChatGPT

By: Matt Burgess — August 6th 2025 at 23:30
Security researchers found a weakness in OpenAI’s Connectors, which let you hook up ChatGPT to other services, that allowed them to extract data from a Google Drive without any user interaction.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Hackers Hijacked Google’s Gemini AI With a Poisoned Calendar Invite to Take Over a Smart Home

By: Matt Burgess — August 6th 2025 at 13:00
For likely the first time ever, security researchers have shown how AI can be hacked to create real world havoc, allowing them to turn off lights, open smart shutters, and more.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

What to Know About Traveling to China for Business

By: Mitch Moxley — August 6th 2025 at 13:00
Recent developments and an escalating trade war have made travel to cities like Beijing challenging but by no means impossible.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Nuclear Experts Say Mixing AI and Nuclear Weapons Is Inevitable

By: Matthew Gault — August 6th 2025 at 10:30
Human judgement remains central to the launch of nuclear weapons. But experts say it’s a matter of when, not if, artificial intelligence will get baked into the world’s most dangerous systems.
☐ ☆ ✇ Krebs on Security

Phishers Target Aviation Execs to Scam Customers

By: BrianKrebs — July 24th 2025 at 17:57

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.

JUSTY JOHN

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 NetworksUnit 42 research team.

SILVERTERRIER

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.

FINANCIAL FRAUD KILL CHAIN

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.

☐ ☆ ✇ Krebs on Security

DOGE Denizen Marko Elez Leaked API Key for xAI

By: BrianKrebs — July 15th 2025 at 01:23

Marko Elez, a 25-year-old employee at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has been granted access to sensitive databases at the U.S. Social Security Administration, the Treasury and Justice departments, and the Department of Homeland Security. So it should fill all Americans with a deep sense of confidence to learn that Mr. Elez over the weekend inadvertently published a private key that allowed anyone to interact directly with more than four dozen large language models (LLMs) developed by Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI.

Image: Shutterstock, @sdx15.

On July 13, Mr. Elez committed a code script to GitHub called “agent.py” that included a private application programming interface (API) key for xAI. The inclusion of the private key was first flagged by GitGuardian, a company that specializes in detecting and remediating exposed secrets in public and proprietary environments. GitGuardian’s systems constantly scan GitHub and other code repositories for exposed API keys, and fire off automated alerts to affected users.

Philippe Caturegli, “chief hacking officer” at the security consultancy Seralys, said the exposed API key allowed access to at least 52 different LLMs used by xAI. The most recent LLM in the list was called “grok-4-0709” and was created on July 9, 2025.

Grok, the generative AI chatbot developed by xAI and integrated into Twitter/X, relies on these and other LLMs (a query to Grok before publication shows Grok currently uses Grok-3, which was launched in Feburary 2025). Earlier today, xAI announced that the Department of Defense will begin using Grok as part of a contract worth up to $200 million. The contract award came less than a week after Grok began spewing antisemitic rants and invoking Adolf Hitler.

Mr. Elez did not respond to a request for comment. The code repository containing the private xAI key was removed shortly after Caturegli notified Elez via email. However, Caturegli said the exposed API key still works and has not yet been revoked.

“If a developer can’t keep an API key private, it raises questions about how they’re handling far more sensitive government information behind closed doors,” Caturegli told KrebsOnSecurity.

Prior to joining DOGE, Marko Elez worked for a number of Musk’s companies. His DOGE career began at the Department of the Treasury, and a legal battle over DOGE’s access to Treasury databases showed Elez was sending unencrypted personal information in violation of the agency’s policies.

While still at Treasury, Elez resigned after The Wall Street Journal linked him to social media posts that advocated racism and eugenics. When Vice President J.D. Vance lobbied for Elez to be rehired, President Trump agreed and Musk reinstated him.

Since his re-hiring as a DOGE employee, Elez has been granted access to databases at one federal agency after another. TechCrunch reported in February 2025 that he was working at the Social Security Administration. In March, Business Insider found Elez was part of a DOGE detachment assigned to the Department of Labor.

Marko Elez, in a photo from a social media profile.

In April, The New York Times reported that Elez held positions at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureaus, as well as the Department of Homeland Security. The Washington Post later reported that Elez, while serving as a DOGE advisor at the Department of Justice, had gained access to the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Courts and Appeals System (EACS).

Elez is not the first DOGE worker to publish internal API keys for xAI: In May, KrebsOnSecurity detailed how another DOGE employee leaked a private xAI key on GitHub for two months, exposing LLMs that were custom made for working with internal data from Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter/X.

Caturegli said it’s difficult to trust someone with access to confidential government systems when they can’t even manage the basics of operational security.

“One leak is a mistake,” he said. “But when the same type of sensitive key gets exposed again and again, it’s not just bad luck, it’s a sign of deeper negligence and a broken security culture.”

☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

How government cyber cuts will affect you and your business

— July 3rd 2025 at 09:00
Deep cuts in cybersecurity spending risk creating ripple effects that will put many organizations at a higher risk of falling victim to cyberattacks
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

How Waymo Handles Footage From Events Like the LA Immigration Protests

By: Caroline Haskins — June 11th 2025 at 18:39
Waymo driverless taxis capture troves of video footage in order to operate, but the company reveals very little about how much data is stored—and for how long.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Airlines Don’t Want You to Know They Sold Your Flight Data to DHS

By: Joseph Cox — June 10th 2025 at 13:00
A contract obtained by 404 Media shows that an airline-owned data broker forbids the feds from revealing it sold them detailed passenger data.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

The Race to Build Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ Missile Defense System Is On

By: Caroline Haskins — June 4th 2025 at 10:30
President Donald Trump has proposed building a massive antimissile system in space that could enrich Elon Musk if it materializes. But experts say the project’s feasibility remains unclear.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

What to Expect When You’re Convicted

By: Elana Klein — May 20th 2025 at 10:00
When a formerly incarcerated “troubleshooter for the mafia” looked for a second career he chose the thing he knew best. He became a prison consultant for white-collar criminals.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Trump Signs Controversial Law Targeting Nonconsensual Sexual Content

By: Paresh Dave — May 19th 2025 at 19:29
The Take It Down Act requires platforms to remove instances of “intimate visual depiction” within two days. Free speech advocates warn it could be weaponized to fuel censorship.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

A Silicon Valley VC Got Israel Starlink Access Within Days of October 7 Attack

By: Caroline Haskins — May 19th 2025 at 16:37
During a webinar hosted by Israel’s Defense Ministry, Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire discussed helping connect Israel with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet far earlier than was known.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

For Tech Whistleblowers, There’s Safety in Numbers

By: Victoria Turk — May 19th 2025 at 10:00
Amber Scorah and Psst are building a “digital safe” to help people shine a light on the bad things their bosses are doing, without getting found out.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Deepfakes, Scams, and the Age of Paranoia

By: Lauren Goode — May 12th 2025 at 10:00
As AI-driven fraud becomes increasingly common, more people feel the need to verify every interaction they have online.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Think Twice Before Creating That ChatGPT Action Figure

By: Kate O'Flaherty — May 1st 2025 at 13:56
People are using ChatGPT’s new image generator to take part in viral social media trends. But using it also puts your privacy at risk—unless you take a few simple steps to protect yourself.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

AI Code Hallucinations Increase the Risk of ‘Package Confusion’ Attacks

By: Dan Goodin, Ars Technica — April 30th 2025 at 19:08
A new study found that code generated by AI is more likely to contain made-up information that can be used to trick software into interacting with malicious code.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Car Subscription Features Raise Your Risk of Government Surveillance, Police Records Show

By: Dell Cameron — April 28th 2025 at 10:30
Records reviewed by WIRED show law enforcement agencies are eager to take advantage of the data trails generated by a flood of new internet-connected vehicle features.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

ICE Is Paying Palantir $30 Million to Build ‘ImmigrationOS’ Surveillance Platform

By: Caroline Haskins — April 18th 2025 at 15:13
In a document published Thursday, ICE explained the functions that it expects Palantir to include in a prototype of a new program to give the agency “near real-time” data about people self-deporting.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

New Jersey Sues Discord for Allegedly Failing to Protect Children

By: Justin Ling — April 17th 2025 at 15:00
The New Jersey attorney general claims Discord’s features to keep children under 13 safe from sexual predators and harmful content are inadequate.
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Attacks on the education sector are surging: How can cyber-defenders respond?

— April 14th 2025 at 09:00
Academic institutions have a unique set of characteristics that makes them attractive to bad actors. What's the right antidote to cyber-risk?
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Sex-Fantasy Chatbots Are Leaking a Constant Stream of Explicit Messages

By: Matt Burgess — April 11th 2025 at 10:30
Some misconfigured AI chatbots are pushing people’s chats to the open web—revealing sexual prompts and conversations that include descriptions of child sexual abuse.
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Resilience in the face of ransomware: A key to business survival

— March 31st 2025 at 09:00
Your company’s ability to tackle the ransomware threat head-on can ultimately be a competitive advantage
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

Making it stick: How to get the most out of cybersecurity training

— March 28th 2025 at 10:00
Security awareness training doesn’t have to be a snoozefest – games and stories can help instill ‘sticky’ habits that will kick in when a danger is near
☐ ☆ ✇ WeLiveSecurity

AI-driven deception: A new face of corporate fraud

— March 10th 2025 at 10:00
Malicious use of AI is reshaping the fraud landscape, creating major new risks for businesses
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

How to Delete Your Data From 23andMe

By: Emily Mullin, Lily Hay Newman — March 24th 2025 at 20:51
DNA-testing company 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, which means the future of the company’s vast trove of customer data is unknown. Here’s what that means for your genetic data.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

Trump’s Aggression Sours Europe on US Cloud Giants

By: Matt Burgess — March 24th 2025 at 06:00
Companies in the EU are starting to look for ways to ditch Amazon, Google, and Microsoft cloud services amid fears of rising security risks from the US. But cutting ties won’t be easy.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

How to Avoid US-Based Digital Services—and Why You Might Want To

By: Violet Blue — March 21st 2025 at 10:30
Amid growing concerns over Big Tech firms aligning with Trump administration policies, people are starting to move their digital lives to services based overseas. Here's what you need to know.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

A Team of Female Founders Is Launching Cloud Security Tech That Could Overhaul AI Protection

By: Lily Hay Newman — February 25th 2025 at 19:43
Cloud “container” defenses have inconsistencies that can give attackers too much access. A new company, Edera, is taking on that challenge and the problem of the male-dominated startup world.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

‘OpenAI’ Job Scam Targeted International Workers Through Telegram

By: Reece Rogers — February 25th 2025 at 11:30
An alleged job scam, led by “Aiden” from “OpenAI,” recruited workers in Bangladesh for months before disappearing overnight, according to FTC complaints obtained by WIRED.
☐ ☆ ✇ WIRED

The National Institute of Standards and Technology Braces for Mass Firings

By: Will Knight, Paresh Dave, Leah Feiger — February 20th 2025 at 20:19
Approximately 500 NIST staffers, including at least three lab directors, are expected to lose their jobs at the standards agency as part of the ongoing DOGE purge, sources tell WIRED.
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