Bengaluru: Kamin Prajapathi (40), a senior accountant manager in a multinational software company was arrested by the police on Sunday for data theft.

The accused, a resident of Concorde Napa Valley and Kanakapura Road and Bihar stole the data of nearly 300 employees working in the same company, transferring their bank details, credit card details and bank account details to his personal mail.

Prajapathi started working in the company from August 2017 and quit his job in April 2019 though the police said that before resigning he transferred the stolen data to his personal mail with plans to hand the data to another company for a senior-level position. He told the company, he had surplus confidential data that they could use to their advantage and build their business.

KS Santosh, founder of a cybersecurity solutions firm 'Group Cyber ID', says these type of data theft are pretty common, “These frauds occur in startups, where former employees steal data from the startup and begin their own firm using the data. Many companies have filed data theft complaints against individuals,” (Sc Indiatimes.com)

Likewise, Prajapathi allegedly hacked into the website of the company where he worked and is suspected that he had been stealing data since 2017 and selling it to other companies. Aside from the bank details of employees and clients, he also collected pivotal data of the company's clients.

The managers from the private firm, where he previously worked lodged a complaint at the cyber-crime police station, and after a probe the police nabbed Prajapathi confiscating his laptop, CPU and mobile phone. The cyber-crime officials also found an account created by Prajapathi on a web-based email service as solid evidence against him.

There has been a significant rise in data theft cases in the last few years as reliance on digital platforms increase. In the city itself, there have been cases where the miscreants hacked into the system using simple hacking techniques, and thus it is crucial to install effective data security solutions to protect the privacy and curtail cybercrime.

Recall that on Thursday, Sberbank reported a possible leak of credit card accounts, which affects at least 200 customers of the Bank. According to media reports, at the weekend on one of the forums, which was blocked by Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications), there were messages about the sale of personal data of Bank customers. The authors of the announcement indicated that they have access to data of 60 million cards.

Sberbank assured that the funds of its customers are safe because credit card accounts that do not have CVV codes, as well as logins and passwords from the Internet Bank were in the public domain. So, fraudsters can not steal money from the cards.

According to German Gref, President of Sberbank, Sberbank employees learned about the incident on the day of the leak, October 2: an ad was found with personal data of employees. After that, the employee of security service of Sberbank contacted an attacker trying to sell the stolen data.

During the conversation, it became clear that we are talking about an internal leak, Gref said.

According to a statement on the Bank’s website, "as a result of the internal investigation, the security service of the Bank in cooperation with law enforcement agencies, on October 4, 2019, identified an employee of the Bank born in 1991, the head of the sector in one of the business units of the Bank, who had access to databases and who tried to steal customer information for selfish purposes," the message on the Bank's website reads. The culprit of the leak faces criminal liability.

The leak indirectly affected the data of 200 cardholders of Sberbank, which have already been reissued, so " the owners have nothing to worry about," Gref said. He noted that the reissue took only two days.

Gref also apologized to customers and thanked them, noting their calmness.

The court began consideration of the case of a hacker from Novosibirsk, who was engaged in the theft of credentials gaming accounts right at the workplace in the Novosibirsk State Agrarian University, where he worked as a security guard. Data was subsequently sold over the Internet. The security guard was engaged in this activity not less than half a year.

31-year-old former employee of a private security company for six months combined his hacker activity with work as a university security guard, this continued until January 2019. According to the materials of the case, the man downloaded hacker programs for stealing logins and passwords for popular gaming platforms, including Steam and the Rockstar Games and Electronic Arts services.

The hacker sold the received data through the FunPay electronic exchange. The investigation was unable to establish the exact number of hacked accounts, but tracked the payment received by the hacker on the site. However, the business did not have high profitability, since in six months the hacker was able to earn only about 1.7 thousand rubles ($26).

The security guard was caught by the FSB officers, calculating the origin of computer attacks by IP-address. The accused has fully admitted his guilt. Prosecutor's office demands for him two years suspended sentence, without payment of a fine.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time in recent years, when a hacker appears in court in the case of hacking accounts with special software. For example, in June 2019, a hacker from Chelyabinsk was sentenced to 10 months in prison for hacking personal accounts of users in payment systems and accounts in social networks with the help of malware. But the hacker did not manage to steal money from the victims.

BENGALURU: In the last four days, five of Bengaluru’s Traffic Police Twitter accounts have been cracked where the hacker alleged access to the accounts, posting spams and changing their usernames.

While the police exhort about strengthening cyber security and the need to use strong unique passwords to safeguard online accounts, their own accounts are being hacked by simple password guessing techniques.

Jayanagar Traffic Police was the first account to be hacked at around 10 pm on Friday, followed by ACP South East Division and soon KR Puram, Shivajinagar and Airport traffic police twitter accounts too were hacked by Sunday.

This is not the first time when Bengaluru’s traffic police have been made a victim of cyber crime - Elliot Alderson, a French based hacker broke into the city’s traffic police website in march this year exposing directories. Even other government sites are not well protected, the Aeronautical Development Agency’s (ADA) TRACES account of the Income Tax Department was hacked with impunity with the culprit still unidentified.

Though, in this case, the culprits simply second-guessed common passwords. A man called up various traffic police stations, claiming to be from the IT Department and asked account details and passwords to reset them. It is suspected that one of the staff members fell for the con and shared the password.

The black hat tried the password on other accounts and voila, it worked!

After breaching their twitter handles, the miscreants posted spam messages from these accounts and changed their usernames resulting in Shivnagar Traffic police handle being renamed as ‘SHIVAJINAGAR CINEMA’ and KR Puram became ‘KR PURAM T BOLIWOOD’.

These consequences could have been avoided by quick thinking and strong passwords. Cyber security experts repeatedly identify the use of strong, unique passwords so that malicious cyber threats can’t find or guess your password. SplashData, a password security company estimates that approximately 10% of individuals used at least one of the 25 worst passwords on this year's list, and approximately 3% used the worst — 123456.

Additional commissioner of police (traffic) BR Ravikanthe Gowda said they have filed a complaint with city cyber crime police and told officials to immediately change passwords to secure their accounts (quoting TOI). They also reported the hacking to twitter awaiting a response.

An officer said they are unable to take back control of their accounts on grounds of lack of trained men for the job.

Bengaluru has only one cyber crime police station with a tally of 8,200 cases this year, though to open more of these has been repeatedly proposed to no effect.

Smart home products designed by Nest such as smart cameras, smart displays, smart thermostats, and smart doorbells to make our lives more comfortable and safe, may not be all that safe according to a horrifying incident reported by a Milwaukee, Wisconsin based couple, Samantha and Lamont Westmoreland.

 After a hacker hacked into the couple’s home and took control of their gadgets, Samantha said, "It's (installation of gadgets) supposed to make me feel safe, and I didn't feel safe", "My heart was racing, I felt so violated at that point."

As per a report by Fox 6 News, on September 17th, Samantha returned home in which she has Nest camera, a doorbell and a thermostat installed, and found the atmosphere unreasonably warmer, she immediately noticed that her smart thermostat has risen up to 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit).

Initially, she assumed it to be a glitch and set it back to the room temperature, but it kept on going up after every time she turned it down. A while later, the couple heard a voice talking to them from their Nest camera and afterward it played vulgar music. Samantha went ahead, unplugged the camera and turned it to face the ceiling. They changed the passwords of all the three devices but as the issues persisted, they resorted to contacting their internet service provider to have their network and Ids reset.

The couple was of the opinion that their Wi-Fi network and Nest camera was hacked, putting the actual problem into perspective, Lamont Westmoreland said, "If someone hacks into your Wi-Fi, they shouldn't be able to have access to those Nest devices without some sort of wall they have to get over,"

In a conversation with Fox 6 News, the couple revealed that the smart home accessories they had installed at their home since last year, cost them $700, and that they have never faced any problem before this; however, in the wake of this terrifying incident they had a change of mind regarding smart home devices.

Meanwhile, responding to the disturbing experience, a spokesperson of Google, told a media outlet, “Nest was not breached. These reports are based on customers using compromised passwords. In nearly all cases, two-factor verification eliminates this type of security risk,"

Hacker, who has been in the pretrial detention center for the fifth year, made a statement to the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia. He insists that his case was fabricated with the participation of a Kaspersky Lab convicted of high treason along with FSB officers.

Russian hacker Dmitry Popelysh, accused of stealing money from the accounts of Sberbank and VTB together with his twin brother Eugene, said that he sent a complaint to the head of the Russian Investigative Committee. According to the hacker, the criminal case against him and his twin brother was fabricated.

The hacker said that ex-employee of Kaspersky Lab Stoyanov blackmailed and threatened him. Later, he demanded that brothers Popelysh provide technical support to some servers.

It is reported that mentions of an unknown employee who forced the hackers to commit hacks is in the surrender of Popelysh for 2015. However, this information was not verified by the investigation.

Previously, Stoyanov was the head of the computer incident investigation Department at Kaspersky Lab. He also participated in the examination of case of Popelysh.

The representative of Kaspersky Lab told that the company is not aware of Dmitry Popelysh’s appeal to the Investigative Committee.

Recall that in 2012 the brothers Popelysh were convicted of embezzlement of 13 million rubles from customers of banks. In 2015, they were again detained and accused of creating and actively using malware. According to the case, the men stole about 12.5 million rubles ($195,000) in two years. In the summer of 2018, they were sentenced to eight years. In 2019, the sentence was canceled in connection with "violations committed during the preliminary investigation." In total, they have been detained for four years and four months.

It is interesting to note that Dmitry Popelysh is already the second Russian hacker who publicly stated that experts investigating his criminal case forced him to commit hacks. Konstantin Kozlovsky, who has been in a pretrial detention center since May 2016 on charges of organizing a hacker group Lurk, claimed that he was recruited by FSB in 2008 and done various cyber attacks for a long time. He also mentioned that his supervisor was FSB major Dmitry Dokuchaev.

A hacker who carried out cyber attacks on more than 100 companies has been ordered to pay back £922,978.14 of cryptocurrency.

Grant West had been jailed for fraud after carrying out attacks on brands such as Sainsbury's, Uber and Argos.

A police investigation, codename "Operation Draba", uncovered West's activity on the dark web under the moniker of "Courvoisier".

The confiscation order was made during a hearing at Southwark Crown Court.

West, from Sheerness, Kent, used phishing email scams to obtain the financial data of tens of thousands of customers.

He would then sell this personal data in different market places on the dark web, convert the profit made from selling financial details online into cryptocurrency, and store these in multiple accounts.

West, of Ashcroft Caravan Park, was jailed in May at Southwark Crown Court for 10 years and eight months.

Detectives had discovered evidence of West conducting cyber attacks on the websites of 17 major firms.

Following West's arrest, approximately £1m in cryptocurrency was seized from a number of his accounts. Taking currency fluctuations into account the currency is today valued at £922, 978.14.

The cryptocurrency will now be sold and the victims will receive compensation.

As well as financial data, he also sold cannabis which he shipped to customers, and "how to" guides instructing others how to carry out cyber attacks.

West also regularly used stolen credit card details to pay for items for himself, including holidays, food, shopping and household goods. West admitted conspiracy to defraud, possession of criminal property, unauthorised modification of computer material and various drugs offences.

In Russia, a new way of telephone fraud is gaining momentum. Attackers disguised as a bank employee calls to Bank’s client to suspend a financial transaction but do not require to tell confidential data of Bank cards. They claim that the credit institution identified an attempt to the unauthorized withdrawal of funds from an account in another region.

As a result, the scammers report that they blocked the attempt to withdraw money, and offer to verify the devices that have access to the personal account of the client. Then attackers will find out if the client uses the Android or IOS operating system. Subsequently, the attackers offer to help disable the system, which is not used by the client, using the TeamViewer access delegation program.

The TeamViewer access delegation program allows an outsider to connect and perform any operation on your behalf. Fraudsters need to find out from the Bank's client their user id so that attackers can easily connect and take possession of confidential smartphone information. In this case, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible to prove an attempt at unauthorized hacking. After all, the Bank's client voluntarily provided access.

It is worth noting that previously a number of large credit organizations recorded a sharp increase in fraudulent calls to customers from banks using the technology of number substitution. In some banks, the activity of fraudsters has increased tenfold.

The banks indicate that telecom operators are not effectively detecting and blocking such schemes. The solution to the problem came to the level of the Central Bank.

It is interesting to note that on August 10, the Central Bank of Russia recommended banks to inform payment systems of the number of the Bank card, account or mobile phone of the recipient. This should help identify fraudsters and block transactions. The requirements relate to P2P transfers and transfers, where a third Bank is involved, as well as payment systems.

If banks and payment systems follow the Central Bank's recommendations, data on the recipient of funds will be sent to the FinCERT (center for monitoring and responding to computer attacks in the financial sphere of the General Directorate of protection and information security at the Bank of Russia).

According to the leading anti-virus expert of Kaspersky Lab Sergey Golovanov, indicating the phone number will track cases when one person has issued many accounts for his number and uses them to transfer funds using social engineering.

Almost two years ago, Equifax suffered a massive data breach which exposed a significant amount of sensitive data of over 143 million Americans, the compromised information included that of driving licenses, social security numbers, and addresses of the victims. 

It has been uncovered by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times that the consumer credit reporting agency is closing in on a settlement with FTC, state attorneys general, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau along with state and federal agencies. Equifax could settle up with $650 to $700 million, out of which it has put aside $690 million for the purpose of penalty. 

As per the media findings, the amount is expected to differ on the basis of the number of people filing claims and the details of the same will be released on Monday.

Notably, the settlement entails terms to devise a separate fund for the purpose of settlement, however, the amount victim's could expect in compensation is still a matter of question.

Commenting on the matter, Equifax CEO, Richard Smith, said, “At this critical juncture, I believe it is in the best interests of the company to have new leadership to move the company forward,” as he decided to retire in the wake of the cyberattack. 

The UK's biggest provider of forensic services has paid a ransom to criminals after its IT systems were disrupted in a cyber-attack, BBC News has learned.

Eurofins Scientific was infected with a ransomware computer virus a month ago, which led British police to suspend work with the global testing company.

At the time, the firm described the attack as "highly sophisticated".

BBC News has not been told how much money was involved in the ransom payment or when it was paid.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said it was a "matter for the victim" as to whether a ransom had been paid.

The agency, which is investigating the attack, said: "As there is an ongoing criminal investigation, it would be inappropriate to comment."

Eurofins previously said the attack was "well-resourced" but three weeks later said its operations were "returning to normal".

Cyber-attack hits police forensic work

It said it would also not comment on whether a ransom had been paid or not.

It added it was "collaborating with law enforcement" in the UK and elsewhere.

The ransomware attack hit the company, which accounts for over half of forensic science provision in the UK, on the first weekend in June.

Ransomware is a computer virus that prevents users from accessing their system or personal files. Messages sent by the perpetrators demand a payment in order to unlock the frozen accounts.

Eurofins deals with over 70,000 criminal cases in the UK each year.

It carries out DNA testing, toxicology analysis, firearms testing and computer forensics for police forces across the UK.

Forensic science work has been carried out by private firms and police laboratories in England and Wales since the closure of the government's Forensic Science Service in 2012.

'Court hearings postponed'

An emergency police response to the cyber-attack was led by the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) to manage the flow of forensic submissions so DNA and blood samples which needed urgent testing were sent to other suppliers.