A New Hampshire man has been sentenced to 82 months in prison for his role in a scam that installed malicious software on German citizens' computers that forced their modems to dial premium telephone numbers, the FBI announced Monday. Last April, Asu Pala, 37, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud. He also admitted to five counts of failure to file a U.S income tax return while he was working in Boston. A judge ordered him to forfeit $7.9 million and repay the Internal Revenue Service $2.2 million in back taxes. – DK
This week Dr. Doug discusses: Empathy, hacking back, typosquatting, Bitwarden, Lexmark, Exchange, Russians, Iranians, Dragonbridge, Derek Johnson talks about Hive and more on the Security Weekly News.
North Korean hackers have stolen $630 million in cryptocurrency assets in 2022, the highest on record, reports Reuters. Sophisticated techniques have been leveraged by North Korean threat actors to facilitate the record-high theft of virtual assets, which are being allocated toward its nuclear weapons programs, according to a United Nations report. Such a figure comes after a cybersecurity firm earlier reported that more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency have been stolen by North Koreans last year. "The variation in USD value of cryptocurrency in recent months is likely to have affected these estimates, but both show that 2022 was a record-breaking year for DPRK (North Korea) virtual asset theft," said the U.N. report.
Several financial institutions in Brazil have been targeted by the novel Android banking trojan PixPirate that exploits the PIX payments platform for fraudulent activities, according to The Hacker News.