In this week's issue, a hacker is facing a 334 year sentence, scammers target Dell customers months after potential breach, the Dept. of Education is at risk for compromise, a phishing email targeting WhatsApp users is delivering malware and in this week's Rippleshot content, we look at ATM fraud trends and statistics.
Why one hacker is facing 334 years for Stealing 54 credit carDs
A 26-year-old hacker in Turkey is facing a 334-year sentence for stealing credit data. On January 10, Onur Kopçak was sentenced to 135 years in prison for stealing the personal and financial information of 11 individuals and selling that information. This latest sentence adds additional jail time for Kopçak, as he was also sentenced to 199 years in prison in 2013 for a range of cybercrimes including wire fraud, identity theft and website forgery.
For comparison, the hacker behind the the TJX data breach in 2007 that exposed 90 million payment cards was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Scammers target dell customers after Possible data breach
Some of Dell customers are claiming to be the target of fraudsters looking to obtain sensitive personal information disguised as Dell support reps. One customer described the suspicious interaction between himself and a Dell "technician" that called, asking to confirm specific information about his Dell customer service tag number. According to this customer, the only individuals that should have access to that informatin would work for Dell.
When approached by CIO.com, Dell acknowledged that incidents like these are occuring across the industry but had found no evidence that would suggest foul play.
Lawmaker says Dept. of education vulnerable to breach, would dwarf OPM
A U.S. House of Representative warned that the U.S. government is at risk of being a victim of a data breach, citing concerns over the Department of Education's data security standards. The chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), gave a speech in the nation's capital discussing the impact if another governmental agency like the Dept. of Education was breached. According to Chafetz, "almost half of America's records are sitting in the Department of Education."
Chaffetz goes on to say that compared to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Department of Education contains information regarding more than $1 trillion in student loans and the personally identifiable information (PII) of more than 100 million Americans.
WhatsApp phishing email campaign spreading malware
Security researchers have uncovered an email phishing campaign targeted individuals that use the mobile phone mesaging app, WhatsApp. Researchers at Comodo Labs have identified that fraudsters are sending fake emails with a compressed attachment containing malicious software. The emails are being sent from a rogue email address, but are disguised as an email sent by WhatsApp when looking at the "from" address.
Comodo Labs has put together a blog post with details of the phishing campaigng, including a screenshot of one of the emails.
Rippleshot Content: ATM Fraud Trends and statistics
For this week's Rippleshot content, we take a look at some of recent trends and statistics involving ATM fraud from around the world. While more consumers are transacting with mobile payment platforms, reducing the need to carry cash, the average consumer visits an ATM roughly once a week. We cover everything from the expected increase in ATM fraud to how Europe has fared with ATM since their EMV implementation.
To learn more, click here!
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