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Targeted advertising and targeted scam
It’s Christmas time, and we’re waiting for presents from our friends, relatives and loved ones. And scammers know that and want to exploit our expectations and gullibility to their advantage.We are used to targeted advertising – a strategy when a company send ads not to an incredibly large audience, but to a selected subset based on their traits, interests, and preferences. Its key feature is that its work based on use of people’s personal data. Sometimes that kind of ads works, sometimes it’s annoying and unwanted. But the technology itself is functional and relatively easy...
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Killed by a pill bought on Snapchat: the fake drugs poison US teens
Fourteen-year-old Alondra Salinas responded to an offer on Snapchat for blue pills, police said, which turned out to be lethal fentanyl. Her mother was not able to wake her the following day.Seventeen-year-old Zachary Didier was waiting to hear back on his college applications when a counterfeit Percocet killed him. Sammy Berman Chapman, a 16-year-old straight-A student, was found dead in his bedroom after taking what he thought was Xanax.Their incidences are part of an explosion of drug-related deaths among US high school youth, fueled by what professionals say is a flood of fentanyl-filled fake pills...
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Functional and complete cybersecurity platform: is it possible?
Passing year had brought a lot of disturbing events in a field of cybersecurity and data protection. Ransomware had become an epidemic, and nor average users, nor organizations are completely safe from it. So, one could say that 2021 became a year of cybersecurity threats.But hackers and other cybercriminals shouldn’t count their chickens: not only law enforcement agencies are out to get them. There are outfits that call themselves cybersecurity providers. These companies offer solutions aimed at detection and prevention of cyberattacks, online fraud, and IP protection.One of the leading providers – Group-IB – claims...
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How Tor bridges help bypass censorship
The Onion Network not only allows users to access tor books, information resources, and forums that are forbidden on the Internet. It also allows millions of users who live in countries with authoritarian governments to circumvent censorship. It is possible thanks to bridges that do not allow blocking the network.Why are Tor Bridges created?When the Tor client starts, it obtains a tor directory of all incoming, intermediate and outgoing nodes. The publicity of this list is necessary, but there is a problem: it helps to censor their use. With the blocking of the Tor-browser, which...
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Ways to de-anonymize users of anonymous browsers
Users who install tor or other browsers, focused on anonymization use them mainly to visit blocked or protected sites. However, the fact of visiting such resources can not always remain secret. In this article, we will consider options for revealing the identity of tor users on windows, linux, macOS and others. All these methods work bypassing distributed protocols and exploit typical mistakes made by users, settings or the software itself.FingerprintingIf a user uses the same browser to surf both the normal and the "anonymous" network, it can be easily identified via a fingerprint. The fingerprint...
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Intercepting traffic through Tor exit nodes
Tor server exit nodes are one way to intercept traffic and identify the user, as they mediate between the onion tor com network and the user's device. Output nodes can see the traffic as if it had just left the device. Any non-encrypted communication protocols like FTP, HTTP, SMTP can be traced through such nodes. In this way, attackers or government officials can steal your logins and passwords, cookies, uploads and downloads. How can exit node operators harm the network? The output node operator is responsible for ensuring that traffic to and from the client...
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New Phorpiex botnet stole half a million in cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency users in Ethiopia, Nigeria, India, Guatemala and the Philippines are attacked by a new variant of the Phorpiex botnet called Twizt which steals virtual coins. Over the past year attackers have stolen $ 500,000.According to information security company Check Point Research, the new version of the malware "allows the botnet to work successfully without active [C&C] servers" and empty 35 wallets associated with different blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Dogecoin, Litecoin, Monero, Ripple and Zilliqa.The Phorpiex botnet, also known as Trik, is known for sending ransomware spam and participating in ransomware and cryptojacking campaigns...
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What is anonymity and who will suffer from increased online censorship?
At the present time very often there is a discussion about the strengthening of control over Internet users. It is argued by the spread of piracy, pornography, spam and many other reasons. In defense of users are human rights defenders, because the adoption of such a decision violates human rights, as well as users themselves do not want to be totally controlled. For this reason, users are increasingly searching in search engines for the query "host onion site", "tor2web onion links" and other related to the anonymous network Tor queries. What is anonymity?The user who...
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Phishers stole 1.3 million from users of the Monkey Kingdom NFT project
The Monkey Kingdom NFT project on the Solana blockchain reported that it had become a victim of hackers who kidnapped 1.3 million cryptocurrency users to its users.According to the developers, the hack began with Grape, a popular solution for verifying Solana users. The attackers then exploited the vulnerability to gain control of the administrator account and published a phishing link on the Discord channel where Monkey Kingdom publishes its news. Users who clicked on the link connected their wallets, expecting to receive NFT, but instead, hackers stole their SOL tokens.The attackers turned their scheme at...
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Austria's Darknet Drug Gang Crushed by Police
Austria's largest drug gang operating on the darknet has been busted by investigators from the Vienna and Federal Criminal Office. It is reported that the arrested drug dealers had earned millions of euros from selling drugs through the darknet.According to investigators, the gang rented warehouses in the Vienna area and Lower Austria, where they maintained a total of five huge cannabis plantations. The marijuana grown there was distributed throughout Austria via darknet.Investigators found that there were at least nine thousand sales in Vienna alone and that the number of unrecorded transactions by law enforcement was...
