My family and friends know by now that I NEVER open e-cards without calling or emailing them first to ask them 50 questions about the card before I even consider opening it. That might explain the decline in e-cards in my in basket?
Until now, most of my friends and family put up with it because they love me and they all know that like the kid in "6th sense" who "sees dead people", when I look at most anything I "see cyberbadpeople".
So, when I read that bogus White House Christmas e-cards were sent out to people, I absolutely cringed. I knew, before I read the article, that people probably opened them.
According to articles I read, the e-card contained the infamous Zeus malware.
One article mentions that one of the servers used to deliver the e-cards from "the White House" was in Belarus. It is believed that the hackers stole several gigabytes worth of data.
From the site KrebsOnSecurity, he posted the actual message sent to recipients:
“As you and your families gather to celebrate the holidays, we wanted to take
a moment to send you our greetings. Be sure that we’re profoundly grateful
for your dedication to duty and wish you inspiration and success in
fulfillment of our core mission."
The card included links with a picture of a decorated Christmas tree with a file named "card.zip".
The Zeus variant appears to have stolen passwords and used those to steal Word and Excel documents.
Sources:
"White House E-Card Spoof Steals Data", Brian Kalish, NextGov.com, January 4, 2011.
" 'White House' eCard Dupes Dot-Gov Geeks", KrebsonSecurity, January 4, 2011.
Online safety. Online security. Protecting Yourself Online. Protecting Kids Online. Keeping the U.S. Safe from Cybercreeps. Cybercrime. Protecting Against Fraud.
Showing posts with label zeus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zeus. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Friday, December 17, 2010
ACH Fraud Hits Texas - One County Government is out $200,000
$690,000 and $200,000. That's the dollar amount of fraud that just hit Gregg County, Texas.
$690,000 was the heist. $200,000 was the amount that could not get recovered and the County is left with the loss.
The culprit? A computer in the tax office became infected with Zeus, that nasty little trojan that steals online banking credentials.
The fix? They have restored back to paper deposits to avoid future cyber theft.
Quote from the Government Information Security Article:
"As long as I'm tax collector, we will never go back to sending out money electronically again," Mr. Kirk Shields, Gregg County's tax assessor and collector.
Schools, Municipalities, and Businesses are not protected under Regulation E, which protects consumers.
In Fall of 2010, Senator Charles Schumer, (D-NY) asked the Senate to consider a bill that would extend Reg E to protect schools and municipalities.
This still leaves businesses unprotected.
Sources:
"ACH Fraud Hits Texas County", Government Information Security Articles, Linda McGlasson, December 15, 2010.
$690,000 was the heist. $200,000 was the amount that could not get recovered and the County is left with the loss.
The culprit? A computer in the tax office became infected with Zeus, that nasty little trojan that steals online banking credentials.
The fix? They have restored back to paper deposits to avoid future cyber theft.
Quote from the Government Information Security Article:
"As long as I'm tax collector, we will never go back to sending out money electronically again," Mr. Kirk Shields, Gregg County's tax assessor and collector.
Schools, Municipalities, and Businesses are not protected under Regulation E, which protects consumers.
In Fall of 2010, Senator Charles Schumer, (D-NY) asked the Senate to consider a bill that would extend Reg E to protect schools and municipalities.
This still leaves businesses unprotected.
Sources:
"ACH Fraud Hits Texas County", Government Information Security Articles, Linda McGlasson, December 15, 2010.
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