Cyber attack closes bank's doors Reuters reported that the Bank of Valetta, which accounts for almost half of Malta’s banking transactions, had to shut down all of its operations last month after hackers broke into its systems and shifted funds overseas. "Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told parliament the cyber attack involved the creation of false international payments totaling 13 million euros ($14.7 million) to banks in Britain, the United States, the Czech Republic and Hong Kong. The funds have been traced and the Bank of Valletta is seeking to have the fraudulent transactions reversed. Muscat said the attack was detected soon after the start of business on Wednesday when discrepancies were noticed during the reconciliation of international transactions. Shortly after, the bank was informed by state security services that it had received ... Read More

Cyber thieves sending fake security alerts Con artists are targeting thousands of people with tech support scams that pose as security alerts from Norton Security, researchers at Symantec have found. The phony alerts pop up in the browser and urge the victim to run a quick scan of their computer. If the user clicks “OK,” they’ll see a very realistic-looking fake Norton scan running, which tells them their computer is infected. They’ll then be prompted to download an “update” for their antivirus software, which is actually a potentially unwanted application (PUA). The scammers use HTML and JavaScript to create a very convincing illusion that a Norton scan is taking place. The source code contains several invisible HTML div elements which are progressively made visible by JavaScript code. ... Read More

Real-estate phishing scam took $123,000 from a home buyer A man in Portland, Oregon lost $123,000 after falling victim to a phishing real-estate scam, according to Michele Lerner at The Washington Post. In December, Aaron Cole and his family were about to buy a new house through WFG National Title Insurance Company. Shortly before the deal was supposed to take place, Cole received an email that purported to come from WFG which told him to wire the $123,000 down payment to a different address. Cole complied, and the money was laundered through multiple banks and sent out of the country before anyone realized it had been sent to a scammer. Never rely solely on email Fortunately, WFG hired Cole as a spokesperson to raise awareness about cybercrime and scams, ... Read More

Malwarebytes releases State of Malware report Growth in attacks designed to obfuscate access and purpose should put organizations on alert as cybercriminals gain control over endpoints to do just about anything they want. The most dangerous cyberattack is the one you don’t know about. That’s exactly what cybercriminals are focusing on, according to Malwarebytes’ 2019 State of Malware report. If an attack can either run completely in stealth, or simply hide their true intention, in many ways, they’ve already won. According to the report, two very specific types of attacks are on the rise from 2017 to 2018: Trojans saw a 132% increase Backdoors saw a 173% increase Trojans and backdoors Malwarebytes defines each of these separately. Trojans are programs "that claim to perform one function but actually do another", with Backdoors defined as "a type ... Read More