31 August, 2018
This Article will give you a brief summary of the latest news related to cyber intelligence and proactive cyber security provided by cybercure.ai.
ITEM 1
Point of Sales, also known as POS , are the way for shops and restaurants to charge their customers money. In other words, they are the cash register.
In the past, everything was done manually. But today, all of the cash registers are digital, and running applications. This is where hackers are targeting.
A cyber attack at a restaurant chain or hotel is a big opportunity for hackers. Having malware at a popular restaurant or hotel give the cyber criminal endless opportunities to gain financial profit by harvesting financial and personal details from customers.
In June, PDQ, a large food chain working in the USA, announced they detected a year-long breach that sent payment information outside of the company.
PDQ is joining other food networks that were impacted from cyber criminal actions, such as Arby’s. Sourcers state that more than 355,000 debit and credit cards from Arby’s customers could have been compromised.
ITEM 2
7 Nigerians Indicted for Fraud Operation on Dating Sites
A federal grand jury in the USA has charged seven Nigerian nationals for their involvement in a scheme that leveraged fake online dating profiles to con victims out of $1.5 million, the Department of Justice reports. Five of the seven have been arrested, and two remain at large.
The defendants and their co-conspirators allegedly created phony dating profiles and would spend weeks building relationships with their targets before defrauding them. After establishing trust, the con artists would tell stories to convince victims to send them money; for example, they claimed to be working overseas and needed money to travel back to the United States. Their targets were often vulnerable and wealthy, and their funds were sent to bank accounts controlled by the attackers.
This is a known technique, and its been increasingly gaining popularity in Africa-based countries, as it allows people to be targeted easily, and unlike more sophisticated frauds requires little investment setting it up.
ITEM 3
Pay attention to this story. Mexico’s financial authorities warned local banks to be on alert for potential cyber attacks, and to strengthen security systems by activating protocols established in the wake of recent bank hacks.
The statement did not detail the reason behind the alert.
However, during 2018, several cyber attacks were performed in Mexico. Some of them affected the payment systems of banks.
The estimations of how much the hackers took are ranging between 15 to 80 million US dollars.
This makes this attack on the banks one of the biggest publicly known heists in cyber history, second to the Federal World Bank incident, where the hackers managed to get away with an estimated 85M USD.
As more and more banks are targeted and attacked by professional hackers,
Mexico established several new teams that are meant to deal with the cyber challenges they are facing.
ITEM 4
In April, the acting Director of the Information Security Department of the Central Bank in Russia, Artem Sychev was quoted as saying to the press, “We have so far not seen a single credit institution that fully met all our requirements.”
It didn’t take long for one of Russia’s largest banks to be hit by a significant online attack.
According to the reports, the attack started in late May, when the group managed to compromise a bank’s router. Through the router, it entered the network and found a computer which it could compromise and use to cash out with over $900,000.
The group suspected to be affiliated with this attack called themselves the MoneyTaker gang. They seem to be notorious when it comes to stealing cash from banks and companies. Last year, the group was suspected of stealing more than $10 million from Russian, American and UK companies.
Conclusion
That’s it for this podcast, I hope you found this episode interesting.
Stay safe, and don’t forget to visit www.cybercure.ai for the latest podcasts and cyber intelligence.