Online fraud hits record losses
The FBI’s latest Internet Crime Report (IC3) for 2023 is out and th e numbers are grim. A reported $12.5 billion dollars was lost to online fraud last year- up 22% from the year before. To put that into perspective, $12.5 billion could cover a Netflix subscription for about 67 million years. The report highlights over 880,000 complaints received, with investment fraud accounting for the highest loss at $4.57 billion, showing a 38% increase from the previous year. The report also notes a rise in complaints related to ransomware, business email compromise scams, and cryptocurrency investment fraud.
States urge Meta to crack down on scammers
41 attorneys general from around the U.S. are demanding “immediate action” from Meta to start cracking down on scammers who hijack Facebook and Instagram accounts. According to Reuters, the AGs point to Meta cutting thousands of jobs focused on security and privacy as a source of the problem. The letter reports these states are seeing a 250-1000% increase in complaints about scammers accessing constituents’ personal accounts. The complaint explains these account takeovers are becoming a “substantial drain on government resources.”
Apple issues update for zero-day flaw
Apple has issued security updates for iOS and iPadOS to address two actively exploited vulnerabilities, CVE-2024-23225 and CVE-2024-23296, related to memory corruption issues in the Kernel and RTKit real-time operating system, respectively. According to The Hacker News, these flaws could allow attackers with arbitrary kernel read and write capability to bypass kernel memory protections. The vulnerabilities have been fixed in iOS 17.4, iPadOS 17.4, iOS 16.7.6, and iPadOS 16.7.6 for a range of devices including iPhone 8 and later models, as well as various iPad generations. This update marks the third actively exploited zero-day addressed by Apple since the beginning of the year.
Denial grows in involvement with BlackCat shutdown
The U.S. Justice Department and Europol join the U.K’s National Crime Agency (NCA) denying any involvement in the recent AlphV/BlackCat alleged shut down. We first reported on Tuesday, sites belonging to the ransomware gang were updated to show a takedown notice from a group of international law enforcement agencies, but all three agencies are now denying any involvement. According to The Record, on Tuesday leaders of the ransomware group admitted the alleged shutdown was part of a bigger scheme to shut the operation down.
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Fake photos lead to election fears
Super Tuesday may have gone off smoothly according to CISA but researchers now warn of a new concern, misleading AI generated images. This is not necessarily a new problem but a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate reveals how troublesome the issue could become. Researchers were able to use OpenAI and Microsoft tools to create fake images including President Biden lying in a hospital bed and election workers smashing voting machines. According to Reuters, the report showed that ChatGPT Plus and Image Creator were successful at blocking all prompts when asked for misleading images of candidates. However, Midjourney performed the worst out of all the tools, generating misleading images in 65% of the researchers’ tests.
Canadian financial intelligence unit forced offline
Canada’s financial intelligence unit, The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), says they took their corporate systems offline as a precaution after experiencing a cyber incident. The government agency is responsible for investigating money laundering cases and tracking millions of suspicious transactions. FINTRAC released a statement saying none of the agency’s intelligence or classified systems were impacted. Bleeping Computer reports they have not seen any ransomware or data extortion groups take responsibility for the attack.
Fake online meetings used to spread malware
The fake meeting scam strikes once again. Researchers from Zcaler’s ThreatLabz found a threat actor that is utilizing fake Skype, Google Meet, and Zoom meetings to distribute malware targeting both Android and Windows users. By creating convincingly similar websites hosted on shared Web platforms—such as “join-skype[.]info” for Skype, “online-cloudmeeting[.]pro” for Google Meet, and “us06webzoomus[.]pro” for Zoom—the attackers aim to spread commodity malware that can steal sensitive data. The malware delivered includes the Android-targeted SpyNote RAT and the Windows-focused NjRAT and DCRat, capable of logging keystrokes, stealing files, and gathering confidential information.
But what about the beer?
It’s rare to find a little humor when reporting on a ransomware attack but beer enthusiasts on Reddit have been having a field day with this one. The Belgian beer brand Duvel reports they were the victim of a ransomware attack and that production was shut down. While there is no estimate of when operations will be back up and running to not be concerned that the warehouses are “stocked.” Those aforementioned beer enthusiasts are calling the situation a national emergency and questions have arised about strategic reserves.