The paper, “An Anatomy of Crypto-Enabled Cybercrimes,” takes a detailed look at how highly sophisticated criminal organizations, mainly based in Russia and North Korea, extort money from corporations worldwide. The majority of these victimized firms are in the United States. “This was actually a difficult decision to do this paper because

That is from the synopsis of an interesting new paper by Lin William Cong, Campbell Harvey, Daniel Rabetti and Zong-Yu Wu. It is a fairly comprehensive look at the criminal ecosystem built on top of the cryptocurrency boom, ranging from hacking, money laundering, scams, ransomware, sextortion and illegal commerce. Obviously,

Wickr Me, an encrypted messaging app owned by Amazon Web Services, has become a go-to destination for people to exchange images of child sexual abuse, according to court documents, online communities, law enforcement and anti-exploitation activists. It’s not the only tech platform that needs to crack down on such illegal content,

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has released a report saying the federal government lacks sufficient information on ransomware attacks and the use of cryptocurrency in ransom payments. The report also found that current reporting of such attacks is fragmented across federal agencies

The North Korean army is continuing to try its hand at ransomware, according to a new report from cybersecurity firm Trellix. Christiaan Beek, lead scientist with the company’s threat research division, released a report on Tuesday tying four ransomware families — BEAF, PXJ, ZZZZ and CHiCHi — to the prolific Unit

The coordinator for the UN body monitoring enforcement of sanctions on North Korea said on Wednesday a stepped-up focus was needed on cybercrime, which had become fundamental to Pyongyang’s ability to finance its banned weapons programs. Eric Penton-Voak, of the UN Security Council’s Panel of Experts on North Korea, noted

On the dark web, the takedown of yet another cryptocurrency-based black market for drugs has become almost a semiannual routine, with plenty of competitors ready to fill the shoes of any market law enforcement manages to bust. But the seizure of the Russian-language dark-web site Hydra may have ripple effects

In mid-2021, members of the Senate Finance Committee introduced Bill S2292, which directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to study the potential pros and cons of allowing private companies to hack back against perpetrators that attack their organizations. Dubbed the “Study on Cyber-Attack Response Options Act,” the bill is the government’s attempt to address the substantial volume of cyber malfeasance against the United States’ public and private sectors being conducted by both state and non-state actors alike.  Emilio Iasiello breaks it all down.  

On Wednesday night, someone drained funds from multiple cryptocurrency wallets connected to the decentralized finance platform BadgerDAO. According to the blockchain security and data analytics Peckshield, which is working with Badger to investigate the heist, the various tokens stolen in the attack are worth about $120 million. While the investigation

Ransomware actors are actively exploiting a critical flaw in the Pulse Secure VPN service, a security researcher recently discovered. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2019-1150, enables attackers to establish unauthenticated HTTPS connections to enterprise networks using the VPN service. Pulse Secure patched the issue in April of last year, and on