Dark web cyber crime markets thriving

The analysis, by researchers at Positive Technologies, included 25 sites on the dark web in Russian and English, with a total registered user base of about three million people.

The researchers examined whether the advertised tools and services would be enough for a real attack and how much technical knowledge was required by prospective clients.

They found that cyber criminals no longer require deep technical knowledge and that any type of attack is now feasible given sufficient funding.

105K Payment Cards Without Pin Protection Compromised in Cyber Attack on Dixons Carphone

British mobile phone and electricals retailer Dixons Carphone said on Wednesday it had been the victim of cybercrime, having discovered unauthorised access to payment card data held by the company. The group said an ongoing investigation indicated there was an attempt to compromise 5.9 million cards in one of the processing systems of Currys PC World and Dixons Travel stores.

It said 5.8 million of these cards have chip and pin protection and the data accessed contained neither pin codes, card verification values (CVV) nor any authentication data that would enable cardholder identification or a purchase to be made.

Hacker Conducts Adult Video Extortion Scheme – Don’t Be A Victim.

As internet users become more aware about cyber threats, the perpetrators of cyber crimes find new ways to get what they want. Instead of stealing your money, an attacker may convince you to unwillingly give it to them. This new extortion technique works by hackers using the passwords of victims to lure them into giving out money.

Hacking your holiday: how cyber criminals are increasingly targeting the tourism market

Imagine if a hacker shut down the baggage handling system of one of the world’s busiest airports. Or took control of a fleet of autonomous delivery trucks and re-routed them to disrupt rush hour traffic in a major metropolis. What if the hacker then demanded a ransom to unlock the digital networks they’d hijacked?

According to the latest State of the Internet report from Akamai, one of the world’s largest providers of computer servers and networks, these scenarios aren’t fantasies of some distant dystopia. They are just around the corner.

Scammers abuse multilingual domain names

Cyber-criminals are abusing multilingual character sets to trick people into visiting phishing websites.

The non-English characters allow scammers to create "lookalike" sites with domain names almost indistinguishable from legitimate ones.

Farsight Security found scam sites posing as banks, loan advisers and children's brands Lego and Haribo.

Smartphone users are at greater risk as small screens make lookalikes even harder to spot.