Showing posts sorted by date for query IC3. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query IC3. Sort by relevance Show all posts

EU Opens The Door of European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) To Protect Europe From Cyber Threat

EU Opens The Door of European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) To Protect Europe From Cyber Threat

We all are aware of FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center also known as IC3, which is protecting U.S. citizen from cyber criminals and attacks. But the cyber world is not limited to U.S. so as cyber criminals, and to get rid of this and while protecting every countries digital fence safe and secure there need to be organizations like IC3. All the growing and developing countries across the globe are in rush to ensue maximum digital and cyber security. This same rush and impact also applies for Europe countries and the result is in front of us. As the fight against cyber crime in Europe has got a new home. The European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) officially open its doors from this January 11, at the European Police Office, Europol in the Hague. In the middle of last year European Commission declared that are preparing a cybercrime center to fight against cyber threats. And after an effort of six months they made it possible and live for the people of Europe. Such organization will surely enhance the cyber security of European countries.  In the official press release EUROPA said "EC3 will be up and running to help protect European citizens and businesses from cyber-crime." 

EC3 officially commenced its activities on 1 January 2013 with a mandate to tackle the following areas of cybercrime: 
  • That committed by organised groups to generate large criminal profits such as online fraud
  • That which causes serious harm to the victim such as online child sexual exploitation
  • That which affects critical infrastructure and information systems in the European Union

According to the press release of European Commission - "The Cybercrime Centre will give a strong boost to the EU's capacity to fight cybercrime and defend an internet that is free, open and secure. Cybercriminals are smart and quick in using new technologies for criminal purposes; the EC3 will help us become even smarter and quicker to help prevent and fight their crimes", said Commissioner Malmström.
"In combatting cybercrime, with its borderless nature and huge ability for the criminals to hide, we need a flexible and adequate response. The European Cybercrime Centre is designed to deliver this expertise as a fusion centre, as a centre for operational investigative and forensic support, but also through its ability to mobilise all relevant resources in EU Member States to mitigate and reduce the threat from cybercriminals wherever they operate from", said Troels Oerting, Head of the European Cybercrime Centre
Investigations into online fraud, child abuse online and other cybercrimes regularly involve hundreds of victims at a time, and suspects in many different parts of the world. Operations of this magnitude cannot be successfully concluded by national police forces alone.
The opening of the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) marks a significant shift in how the EU has been addressing cybercrime so far. Above all, the approach of the EC3 will be more forward-thinking and inclusive. It will pool expertise and information, support criminal investigations and promote EU-wide solutions.
The EC3 will focus on illegal online activities carried out by organised crime groups, especially attacks targeting e-banking and other online financial activities, online child sexual exploitation and those crimes that affect the critical infrastructure and information systems in the EU.
The Centre will also facilitate research and development and ensure capacity building among law enforcement, judges and prosecutors and will produce threat assessments, including trend analyses, forecasts and early warnings. In order to dismantle more cybercrime networks and prosecute more suspects, the EC3 will gather and process cybercrime related data and will provide a Cybercrime Help desk for EU countries' law enforcement units. It will offer operational support to EU countries (e.g. against intrusion, fraud, online child sexual abuse, etc.) and deliver high-level technical, analytical and forensic expertise in EU joint investigations. 

For Detailed Information Please Visit The Official Website of Europol's EC3 



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FBI's Cybercrime Unit Taken New Initiative to Nab Hackers & Intruders

FBI's Cybercrime Unit Taken New Initiative to Nab Hackers & Intruders 

The month of October has been declared by FBI as the National Cyber Security Awareness Month of 2012 , and in the last week of this month the cyber crime division of FBI has started a new program which will specially emphasis on hackers and intrusion. The main aim of this program is to focusing on hackers and to prevent cyber crime. Last month  Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a report based on information from law enforcement and complaints submitted to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) detailing recentcyber crime trends and new twists to previously-existing cyber scams. Now the recent movement of FBI will surely inject fear into the heart & mind of hackers. According to FBI's official release - Early last year, hackers were discovered embedding malicious software in two million computers, opening a virtual door for criminals to rifle through users’ valuable personal and financial information. Last fall, an overseas crime ring was shut down after infecting four million computers, including half a million in the U.S. In recent months, some of the biggest companies and organizations in the U.S. have been working overtime to fend off continuous intrusion attacks aimed at their networks. The scope and enormity of the threat—not just to private industry but also to the country’s heavily networked critical infrastructure—was spelled out last month in Director Robert S. Mueller’s testimony to a Senate homeland security panel: “Computer intrusions and network attacks are the greatest cyber threat to our national security.”
To that end, the FBI over the past year has put in place an initiative to uncover and investigate web-based intrusion attacks and develop a cadre of specially trained computer scientists able to extract hackers’ digital signatures from mountains of malicious code. Agents are cultivating cyber-oriented relationships with the technical leads at financial, business, transportation, and other critical infrastructures on their beats. 

Today, investigators in the field can send their findings to specialists in the FBI Cyber Division’s Cyber Watch command at Headquarters, who can look for patterns or similarities in cases. The 24/7 post also shares the information with partner intelligence and law enforcement agencies—like the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security and the National Security Agencyon the FBI-led National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force.
A key aim of the Next Generation Cyber Initiative has been to expand our ability to quickly define “the attribution piece” of a cyber attack to help determine an appropriate response, said Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the Bureau’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch. “The attribution piece is: who is conducting the attack or the exploitation and what is their motive,” McFeely explained. “In order to get to that, we’ve got to do all the necessary analysis to determine who is at the other end of the keyboard perpetrating these actions.”
The Cyber Division’s main focus now is on cyber intrusions, working closely with the Bureau’s Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence Divisions.  “We are obviously concerned with terrorists using the Internet to conduct these types of attacks,” McFeely said. “As the lead domestic intelligence agency within the United States, it’s our job to make sure that businesses’ and the nation’s secrets don’t fall into the hands of adversaries.”
In the Coreflood case in early 2011, hackers enlisted a botnet—a network of infected computers—to do their dirty work. McFeely urged everyone connected to the Internet to be vigilant against computer viruses and malicious code, lest they become victims or unwitting pawns in a hacker or web-savvy terrorist’s malevolent scheme.
“It’s important that everybody understands that if you have a computer that is outward-facing—that it’s connected to the web—that your computer is at some point going to be under attack,” he said. “You need to be aware of the threat and you need to take it seriously.” 


To Listen the Podcast of FBI's "“The intrusions are occurring 24/7, 365 days a year.” Click Here






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FBI Started National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2012

FBI Started National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2012

Last week the  Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a report based on information from law enforcement and complaints submitted to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) detailing recent cyber crime trends and new twists to previously-existing cyber scams. As you all know that the Month of October is celebrated as National Cyber Security Awareness Month for last nine years. This year also FBI declared the October as National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2012. According to the official blog of FBI - the threat has continued to grow even more complex and sophisticated. Just 12 days ago, in fact, FBI Director Robert Mueller said that “cyber security may well become our highest priority in the years to come.” 

For its part, the FBI is strengthening its cyber operations to sharpen its focus on the greatest cyber threats to national security: computer intrusions and network attacks. We are enhancing the technological capabilities of all investigative personnel and hiring additional computer scientists to provide expert technical support to critical investigations. We are creating two distinct task forces in each field office: Cyber Task Forces, focused on intrusions and network attacks that will draw on our existing cyber squads; and Child Exploitation Task Forces, focused on crimes against children. We are also increasing the size and scope of the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force—the FBI-led multi-agency focal point for coordinating and sharing cyber threat information to stop current and future attacks.

The FBI also runs several other cyber-related programs, including the Innocent Images National Initiative—which combats online child predators—and the Internet Crime Complaint Center—a partnership between the Bureau and the National White Collar Crime Center that serves as a clearinghouse for triaging cyber complaints and provides an easy-to-use online tool for reporting these complaints.

Because of the interconnectedness of online systems, every American who uses digital technologies at home or in the office can—and must—play a part in cyber security. For example, if you open a virus-laden e-mail attachment at work, you could infect your entire company’s computer network. Don’t be the weakest link: get educated on cyber safety.

Here are a few basic steps you can take to be more secure:

  • Set strong passwords, and don’t share them with anyone.
  • Keep a clean machine—your operating system, browser, and other critical software are optimized by installing regular updates.
  • Maintain an open dialogue with your family, friends, and community about Internet safety.
  • Limit the amount of personal information you post online, and use privacy settings to avoid sharing information widely.
  • Be cautious about what you receive or read online—if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.


Visit the links below for more tips on protecting your computers and other electronic devices, information on cyber threats, and details on how to report cyber crimes or scams:



For more information:






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FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) Issues Latest Internet Scam Alerts

FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) Issues Latest Internet Scam Alerts

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a report based on information from law enforcement and complaints submitted to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) detailing recent cyber crime trends and new twists to previously-existing cyber scams. 


TRIANGLE CREDIT CARD FRAUD:- 

Triangle Credit Card Fraud is a common scam known to affect many on-line merchants. It has been called "Triangle Credit Card Fraud" because there are three primary parties involved or impacted by the scam.
The first party is the fraudster who acts as a seller on a popular auction or marketplace site. The fraudster "sells" a product to the second party, the buyer that knows nothing about the scam. The buyer pays the seller for the product or service. The seller then needs to deliver the product or service to the buyer and does so by placing an order with the manufacturer of the product or service to the buyer and does so by placing an order with the manufacturer of the product or service, the third party. That order will contain the buyer’s information for shipping and stolen credit card information for billing. When the company receives the order, the billing and shipping information is all legitimate, thus it looks like an order being placed as a gift, so the company delivers the product or service.
When the card holder finds a fraudulent charge on their card, they may file a dispute with the credit card company resulting in a chargeback for the company. This scheme is often much more complex as it is often led by overseas criminals who recruit established sellers (often referred to as mules) on auction or marketplace sites to "sell" the products. Once a sale is completed, the mule will forward the buyer information and the bulk of the money to the fraudster to place the fraudulent order. Once a mule becomes trusted, they are often allowed to recruit other mules, leading to a complex pyramid of fraudsters and mules.
Through the on-line merchant community, many companies have been made aware of this scheme and have had great successes with stopping the illegal activity using fraud prevention and detection solutions as well as successful criminal prosecutions.

NEW TWIST TO THE WORK-AT-HOME SCHEME:-

The IC3 has previously reported on work-at-home schemes where victims advised they applied for employment through on-line resumes. The alleged employers used the names of well-known financial institutions and industry agencies to lure their victims into the scheme. The potential employees were contacted via e-mail and interviewed for various positions using Yahoo! Instant Messenger.
In some cases, the employees were required to purchase various software packages to perform the tasks required for their employment. The employees received a check and were instructed to keep a portion of the funds for supplies and wire the remaining funds to another individual. Once the employee wired the funds, the check was returned as counterfeit. The IC3 has received over 80 complaints identifying a twist to the scheme reporting that employees were asked to post employment advertisements on Craigslist and provide full details of a credit card, including owner name, address, card number, security code, and the expiration date of the card. In doing so, the victim unknowingly became a recruiter for the fraudster.

NEW TWIST TO THE HIT MAN SCAM:-

Recent complaints reported to the IC3 identified a new twist to the Hit Man Scam The victims informed that the e-mails advised they have been targeted for assassination and asked them to purchase a security alarm to use if they see suspicious activity. The e-mails were signed by Agent Bauer of the International Intelligence Bureau and included the following language:

You have been targeted for assassination over a past legal financial matters. A hired international assassin has been hired to kill you. All information and concrete evidence will be forwarded to you, but that should be after the apprehension of the assassin. Please do not disclose this information to any body, including any other enforcement personal in your region. Our effort to trap him might be jeopadise , if our strategies are expose by other enforcement agencies behind this crime. From this moment see anybody as somebody that wants to kill you.
The private international investigator tracking the assassin , wants you to purchase our device security alarm, as you are expected to press the device alarm if you suspect any activities . We can come to your rescue through any of our attached security personel, and this is possible within our network close to you in less than 10 minutes.
Please try to cooperate with us. We wait to hear from you.

Recipients must be cautious of e-mails purportedly from any government agency endorsing a product or encouraging the recipient to send money for any reason. The United States government does not endorse products via e-mail.


-Source (ic3.gov)




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Anonymous Member John Anthony Borell Charged For Hacking into Utah Police & Salt Lake City Police Dept

Anonymous Member John Anthony Borell Charged For Hacking into Utah Police & Salt Lake City Police Dept

FBI successfully tracked the #OpPiggyBank of Anonymous where two hackers from Anonymous named CabinCr3w & ItsKahuna took responsibility of hacking into the database of the Salt Lake City PD and exposed confidential information such as Full name of the Employ, Address, Phone Number, email-id, password hash and so on. According to a report of Huffington Post - An Ohio man linked to the hacker collective "Anonymous" pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of breaching the websites of the Utah Chiefs of Police Association and the Salt Lake City Police Department. John Anthony Borell III took credit for the attacks on Twitter, said FBI officials, who subpoenaed the direct messages the suspect traded with Salt Lake City reporters. The FBI traced Borell's Twitter account to a workplace computer.
"That didn't hurt the investigation, of course, when people make comments like that," FBI agent David Johnson said Monday. Borell appeared with a public defender at federal court in Salt Lake City after being released from a halfway house for the appearance. He faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted on two counts of computer intrusion, prosecutors said. FBI agents say they don't know what motivated an Ohio man to tamper with the Utah police websites in January. Prosecutors say Borell intruded on the chiefs' website server Jan. 19, then broke into the police department's website Jan. 31. Salt Lake City police spent $33,000 to repair damage to their website and shore up security, and the hacker was able to access citizen's supposedly confidential crime tips and even some personal information on police officers, Johnson said. Borell was recently arrested after Federal Bureau of Investigations agents found him using Twitter and Internet Relay Chat logs. The investigation was spurred by two tips sent in to tips.fbi.gov and ic3.gov that stated Borell was a member of hacking collective Anonymous. It also provided a number of pseudonyms he was associated with including Kahuna, TehTiger, and anonJB.
The indictment states that Borell used the SQL Injection technique to access and take down the websites utahchiefs.org and slcpd.com (Salt Lake City Police Department). The FBI found Twitter direct messages and tweets in which Borell admitted to taking down the websites. Further proof of his identity was found when the FBI looked through chat logs in IRC. There, Borell explained that his father was an attorney and was advising him against talking to the FBI. Agents searched Ohio-based attorneys and found two local attorneys named “John Anthony Borell Esq.”
We would also like to give you reminder that another member of Anonymous affiliated CabinCr3w named Higinio O. Ochoa III, also get busted after he posted girlfriend's breast photo.




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FBI & NCFTA Combining Forces to Fight Better Against Cyber Crime



Long before it was acknowledged to be a significant criminal and national security threat, the FBI established a forward-looking organization to proactively address the issue of cyber crime. Since its creation in 1997, the National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA), based in Pittsburgh, has become an international model for bringing together law enforcement, private industry, and academia to share information to stop emerging cyber threats and mitigate existing ones.
“The exchange of strategic and threat intelligence is really the bread and butter of the NCFTA,” said Special Agent Eric Strom, who heads the FBI unit—the Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit (CIRFU)—assigned to the NCFTA. “The success of this effort at every level comes down to the free flow of information among our partners.”
When the nonprofit NCFTA was established, the biggest threat to industry was from spam—those annoying unsolicited e-mails that fill up inboxes. Today, the organization deals with malicious computer viruses, stock manipulation schemes, telecommunication scams, and other financial frauds perpetrated by organized crime groups who cause billions of dollars in losses to companies and consumers.
The NCFTA essentially works as an early-warning system. If investigators for a major banking institution, for example, notice a new kind of malware attacking their network, they immediately pass that information to other NCFTA members. Alliance members—many have staff permanently located at the NCFTA—then develop strategies to mitigate the threat. FBI agents and analysts from CIRFU, also located at NCFTA headquarters, use that information to open or further existing FBI investigations, often in concert with law enforcement partners around the world.
“Cyber crime has changed so much since those early days of spamming,” Strom said. “And the threat continues to evolve globally, which is why the NCFTA’s work is so critical to both business and law enforcement.”
The organization draws its intelligence from hundreds of private-sector members, Carnegie Mellon University’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). That extensive knowledge base has helped CIRFU play a key role in some of the FBI’s most significant cyber cases in the past several years. (See sidebar.)

-News Source (NCFTA & FBI)


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AVG Premium Security

 
AVG Technologies today announced AVG Premium Security, the all-new and only Internet security solution that actively surveys the Web for incidents of stolen identity. Available now for US$69.99, the product includes AVG Identity Alert, AVG Internet Security and AVG Quick Tune.
Placing identity protection at the center of the new offering, AVG Identity Alert scours criminal web pages, chat rooms and bulletin boards to determine whether a customer's personal information has been used, traded or sold online. By monitoring a user's e-mail address and debit and credit card numbers—the three primary elements of an online identity—the system notifies the user if personal details appear somewhere they shouldn't.

AVG Identity Alert also provides an Identity Theft Risk Score, which evaluates online theft risk based on behavioral characteristics, and an Identity Theft Restoration Kit, which provides documentation, sample letters and other tools for restoring an identity should it be compromised.
AVG Premium Security is also comprised of the award-winning AVG Internet Security, which offers signature anti-virus, anti-spyware, AVG Protective Cloud Technology and the AVG Community Protection Network. Finally, AVG Quick Tune contains four of the 16 features available in the company's popular PC Tuneup, including the disk defragmenter, junk file removal, registry cleaner and broken shortcut removal.

“When you combine the shocking security lapses we have seen out of very high profile and respected brands such as Sony, Epsilon and Citigroup in the past few months with the liability shift toward consumers, it is clear that identity theft protection tools are no longer a nice to have,” said J.R Smith, CEO, AVG Technologies. “Banks and corporations are at an important tipping point, showing strong indications that they will no longer simply cover losses, and expecting the online users to share equal responsibility in taking appropriate security measures that ultimately protect each other from malicious attacks.”

In 2010 alone, IC3, the FBI/National White Collar Crime Center partnership, reported more than 300,000 individual complaints of Internet crime. Identity theft was one of the top three complaints, next to non-delivery of payment or merchandise and scams using the FBI's name.
“The key to combating internet crime is real-time intelligence and protection,” Smith added. “Our identity-theft tools offer consumers access to the kind of timely intelligence they need to more effectively monitor and protect their personal information. Credit report-driven tools are much slower and therefore give thieves a massive head start, making clean-up and recovery of identity theft under those circumstances very difficult for the average consumer.”

“To protect our 110 million active customers around the globe, AVG will now extend beyond local Internet security and anti-virus protection to provide customers with a digital bodyguard dedicated to protecting their names and identities online,” said Tony Anscombe, AVG's Ambassador of Free Products. “Even if an identity is compromised outside a user's home network, AVG Premium Security can still discover it. Bottom line: we offer vital peace of mind, virtually eliminating the perils often associated with surfing the Web.”
 
For more information Click Here

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cyber-crimeKnowBe4: $35,000 Cybercrime Against Florida Attorney Could Have Been Prevented



According to a new case study published by the Internet Security Awareness Training (ISAT) firm KnowBe4, Bradenton-based lawyer Kimberly Graus found out the hard way that data security breaches can happen to any business, anywhere, at any time when hackers bypassed her antivirus software and initiated $35,000 in wire transfers from a trust fund she manages. She was just one of the nearly 20,000 Floridians who filed a case with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center last year - making Florida #2 in the nation in cybercrime complaints.*
Graus was most likely the victim of a phishing attempt disguised as a seemingly innocuous email. When she clicked a link within the message, it surreptitiously downloaded a program to her computer. This malware allowed the hackers to capture Graus' account passwords when she entered them online, and then initiate the illicit wire transfers from her own IP address.
Upon noticing the missing funds, Graus acted quickly to report the suspicious activity, enabling her bank to stop three of the four electronic transfers. Unfortunately, $9,500 had already gone through to an unknown recipient in the Ukraine. Because businesses do not enjoy the same FDIC insurance that consumers do, that left Graus out nearly $10,000 - plus the cost of a computer forensic analysis and a new laptop.
"Graus protected her account information, maintained antivirus software and had three layers of password security in her online banking system. Yet in spite of these precautions, she still fell prey to the sophisticated cyberheist tactics of Eastern European criminals," explained KnowBe4 founder and CEO Stu Sjouwerman (pronounced "shower-man"). "Many professionals believe that antivirus software will protect them from all external threats, but that simply isn't the case."
Sjouwerman noted that Internet security awareness has led most people to be suspicious of unsolicited emails from unknown senders, especially when the messages are rife with misspellings and poor grammar. But when phishing emails appear to be an official message sent by the recipient's bank or credit card company, a government agency, or a trusted friend or colleague, even the most savvy Internet users may click without thinking. And all it takes is one click to compromise a computer and its data security.
"Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) need to take proactive measures to combat new and evolving cybercrime tactics," said Sjouwerman. "They also need to realize that they can't rely solely on their IT teams alone to guard against hackers and other cyber threats. Any employee that inadvertently clicks on a phishing email can expose the entire company to potentially devastating damages and loss. That's why Internet security awareness training is critical for staff at every level of the organization."
KnowBe4 offers a free phishing security test that allows SMEs to determine how Phish-prone™ their employees are. The company's exclusive First2Know™ Internet Security Awareness Training (ISAT) is an industry first, providing high-quality, interactive training to educate staff about phishing, malware, social engineering and other related topics. Afterward, scheduled phishing security tests help to keep employees on their toes and determine if remedial training is necessary.
To view the case study about the Bradenton trust account cyberheist, or to learn more about the Internet Security Awareness Training (ISAT) offered by KnowBe4, visit www.knowbe4.com/case-studies.
*Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). 2010 Internet Crime Report and Florida IC3 2010 Internet Crime Report; February 2011.
About Stu Sjouwerman and KnowBe4 
Stu Sjouwerman is the founder and CEO of KnowBe4, LLC, which provides web-based Internet Security Awareness Training (ISAT) to small and medium enterprises. A data security expert with more than 30 years in the IT industry, Sjouwerman was the co-founder of Sunbelt Software, an award-winning anti-malware software company that he and his partner sold to GFI Software in 2010. Realizing that the human element of security was being seriously neglected, Sjouwerman decided to help entrepreneurs tackle cybercrime tactics through advanced Internet security awareness training. He is the author of four books, including Cyberheist: The Biggest Financial Threat Facing American Businesses Since the Financial Meltdown of 2008, available in April 2011. For more information on Sjouwerman and KnowBe4, visitwww.knowbe4.com.


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