T-Mobile is investigating a retail store employee who allegedly made unauthorized changes to a subscriber's account in an elaborate scheme to steal the customer's three-letter Instagram username. The modifications, which could have let the rogue employee empty bank accounts associated...

LocationSmart, a U.S. based company that acts as an aggregator of real-time data about the precise location of mobile phone devices, has been leaking this information to anyone via a buggy component of its Web site -- without the need...

Much of the fraud involving counterfeit credit, ATM debit and retail gift cards relies on the ability of thieves to use cheap, widely available hardware to encode stolen data onto any card's magnetic stripe. But new research suggests retailers and...

I spent a few days last week speaking at and attending a conference on responding to identity theft. The forum was held in Florida, one of the major epicenters for identity fraud complaints in United States. One gripe I heard...

Microsoft today released a bundle of security updates to fix at least 67 holes in its various Windows operating systems and related software, including one dangerous flaw that Microsoft warns is actively being exploited. Meanwhile, as it usually does on...

A monster distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) against KrebsOnSecurity.com in 2016 knocked this site offline for nearly four days. The attack was executed through a network of hacked "Internet of Things" (IoT) devices such as Internet routers, security cameras and digital...

Twitter just asked all 300+ million users to reset their passwords, citing the exposure of user passwords via a bug that stored passwords in plain text -- without protecting them with any sort of encryption technology that would mask a...

Storing passwords in plaintext online is never a good idea, but it's remarkable how many companies have employees who are doing just that using online collaboration tools like Trello.com. Last week, KrebsOnSecurity notified a host of companies that employees were...

On two occasions this past year I’ve published stories here warning about the prospect that new European privacy regulations could result in more spams and scams ending up in your inbox. This post explains in a question and answer format...

Authorities in the U.S., U.K. and the Netherlands on Tuesday took down popular online attack-for-hire service WebStresser.org and arrested its alleged administrators. Investigators say that prior to the takedown, the service had more than 136,000 registered users and was responsible for...

MEDantex, a Kansas-based company that provides medical transcription services for hospitals, clinics and private physicians, took down its customer Web portal last week after being notified by KrebsOnSecurity that it was leaking sensitive patient medical records -- apparently for thousands...

Facebook has built some of the most advanced algorithms for tracking users, but when it comes to acting on user abuse reports about Facebook groups and content that clearly violate the company's "community standards," the social media giant's technology appears...

In 2016, KrebsOnSecurity exposed a network of phony Web sites and fake online reviews that funneled those seeking help for drug and alcohol addiction toward rehab centers that were secretly affiliated with the Church of Scientology. Not long after the...

Hours after being alerted by KrebsOnSecurity, Facebook last week deleted almost 120 private discussion groups totaling more than 300,000 members who flagrantly promoted a host of illicit activities on the social media network's platform. The scam groups facilitated a broad spectrum of...

The Internal Revenue Service has been urging tax preparation firms to step up their cybersecurity efforts this year, warning that identity thieves and hackers increasingly are targeting certified public accountants (CPAs) in a bid to siphon oodles of sensitive personal...

Adobe and Microsoft each released critical fixes for their products today, a.k.a "Patch Tuesday," the second Tuesday of every month. Adobe has updated its Flash Player program to resolve a half dozen critical security holes. Microsoft issued updates to correct...

Social media sites are littered with seemingly innocuous little quizzes, games and surveys urging people to reminisce about specific topics, such as "What was your first job," or "What was your first car?" The problem with participating in these informal...

Over the past few months I’ve been working on a program to convert images of technical drawings into digital formats. In other words, the program will convert an image like this. Into a digital format that can be used in...

The U.S. Secret Service is warning financial institutions about a new scam involving the temporary theft of chip-based debit cards issued to large corporations. In this scheme, the fraudsters intercept new debit cards in the mail and replace the chips...

A story published here last week warned readers about a vast network of potentially malicious Web sites ending in ".cm" that mimic some of the world's most popular Internet destinations (e.g. espn[dot]cm, aol[dot]cm and itunes[dot].cm) in a bid to bombard...

Panerabread.com, the Web site for the American chain of bakery-cafe fast casual restaurants by the same name, leaked millions of customer records -- including names, email and physical addresses, birthdays and the last four digits of the customer's credit card...

T-Mobile, AT&T and other mobile carriers are reminding customers to take advantage of free services that can block identity thieves from easily "porting" your mobile number out to another provider, which allows crooks to intercept your calls and messages while...

It's been a busy few weeks in cybercrime news, justifying updates to a couple of cases we've been following closely at KrebsOnSecurity. In Ukraine, the alleged ringleader of the Avalanche malware spam botnet was arrested after eluding authorities in the...

In October 2017, KrebsOnSecurity warned that ne'er-do-wells could take advantage of a relatively new service offered by the U.S. Postal Service that provides scanned images of all incoming mail before it is slated to arrive at its destination address. We advised...

Multiple Chase.com customers have reported logging in to their bank accounts, only to be presented with another customer's bank account details. Chase has acknowledged the incident, saying it was caused by a two an internal "glitch" Wednesday evening that did...

Patrick Reames had no idea why Amazon.com sent him a 1099 form saying he'd made almost $24,000 selling books via Createspace, the company's on-demand publishing arm. That is, until he searched the site for his name and discovered someone has...

Identity thieves who specialize in tax refund fraud have been busy of late hacking online accounts at multiple tax preparation firms, using them to file phony refund requests. Once the Internal Revenue Service processes the return and deposits money into...

Companies around the globe are scrambling to comply with new European privacy regulations that take effect a little more than three months from now. But many security experts are worried that the changes being ushered in by the rush to...

Microsoft today released a bevy of security updates to tackle more than 50 serious weaknesses in Windows, Internet Explorer/Edge, Microsoft Office and Adobe Flash Player, among other products. A good number of the patches issued today ship with Microsoft's "critical"...

Newtek Business Services Corp. [NASDAQ:NEWT], a Web services conglomerate that operates more than 100,000 business Web sites and some 40,000 managed technology accounts, had several of its core domain names stolen over the weekend. The theft shut off email and...