Tag: hacking

Kentucky dad Jesse Kipf faked his own death to avoid paying more than $100K in child support, faces lengthy jail time

A Kentucky father has admitted to faking his death to avoid paying his ex-wife more than $100,000 in outstanding child support and is facing serious jail time for the elaborate ruse.

Jesse Kipf, 38, pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of computer fraud in federal court on March 29, according to the plea agreement obtained by Law & Crime.

Kipf was incident by the United States Attorney’s Office in November after investigators with the FBI in Louisville, Kentucky, the Department of the Attorney General for Hawaii, and the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office caught wind of his cyber crimes, according to a press release.


Jesse Kipf was charged with computer fraud stemming from the data breaches of GuestTek Interactive Entertainment in February 2023 and Milestone Inc. in June 2023. Grayson County (Ky.) Detention Center

Kipf admitted to completing a Hawaii Death Certificate Worksheet in Jan. 2023, where he created a fake death certificate for himself and “assigned himself as the medical certifier for the case and certified that case.”

Prosecutors argued that his motivation to commit the cyber crimes was fueled by his desire to avoid paying “his outstanding child support obligations to his ex-wife,” the plea agreement states.

The very-much-alive father then “infiltrated other states’ death registry systems” using stolen credentials, according to the plea agreement.

“He applied a digital signature for [the physician], providing his name, title, and license number. This resulted in the Defendant being registered as deceased in many government databases.”

However, his illegal online endeavors didn’t end with faking his death.

Kipf also used the credentials he stole to gain access to private business, government, and corporate networks with the goal of trying to sell the sensitive information he fraudulently obtained to other crooks online.

“In doing so, the Defendant caused damage to multiple computer networks and stole the identities of numerous individuals,” according to the plea agreement.

In January, Kipf was charged with computer fraud stemming from the data breaches of GuestTek Interactive Entertainment in February 2023 and Milestone Inc. in June 2023.

Authorities estimated the damages caused by Kipf for skipping out on his child support payments and gaining access to the networks exceeded more than $195,000, court documents show.

The computer-hacking father agreed to pay restitution of $3,500 to the state of Hawaii, $56,247 to Milestone Inc., $19,653 to GuestTek Interactive Entertainment, and $116,357 to the California child support agency, according to the plea deal.

He also agreed to forfeit his electronic devices and $16,218 in gold and silver coins.

Kipf was initially charged with five counts of computer fraud and three counts of aggravated identity theft, which carried a maximum of 30 years behind bars before many of those charges were dropped after he took the plea deal.

His sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 12 in federal court in Frankfort, Kentucky.

Kipf now faces a maximum of five years in federal prison for aggravated identity theft and a minimum of two years for computer fraud — both of which carry a steep fine of $250,000, according to the plea deal.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

SIM Swappers Are Exploiting eSIM Vulnerabilities for Financial Frauds: Report

SIM swapping crimes are on the rise globally, according to a new report. These crimes are primarily committed using eSIM (Embedded Subscriber Identity Modules) users. eSIMs are digitally stored SIM cards which are embedded into a device using a software. Hackers are now reportedly exploiting vulnerabilities within this technology to brute force into the victim’s phone account to port the number to their own device. The findings also revealed that the bad actors are mainly interested in victim’s online banking accounts and other financial services.

The information comes from the Russian cybersecurity firm FACCT, a spin-off of Group IB. In its report, it highlighted that it has recorded “more than a hundred attempts to enter clients’ personal accounts in online services from just one financial organisation.” It also stated that cybercriminals have been using this method globally for at least a year.

Modus operandi of the cybercrime is straightforward. Earlier, the criminals would deploy social engineering strategies or use insiders at telecom companies to illegally port numbers to their devices. However, the report states that now the hackers have resorted to exploiting the vulnerabilities within eSIM. While it did not explain the technicalities, the process includes accessing the phone account credentials of a victim by either stealing them, getting access to leaked details through data breach incidents, or brute-forcing their way into the victim’s account.

Once the SIM swappers gain the credentials, they generate QR codes through the hijacked phone account which can be used to port the device directly, circumventing the usual procedure. The report also added that the criminals were only focused on committing financial fraud by accessing the victim’s online banking accounts, crypto wallets, and more.

“Having gained access to the victim’s mobile phone number, cybercriminals can obtain access codes, two-factor authentication for various services, including banks, instant messengers, which opens up a lot of opportunities for attackers to implement criminal schemes,” said Dmitry Dudkov, Fraud Protection Department Specialist at FACCT.

FACCT also urged eSIM users to improve the security of their phone account by using two-factor authentication and keeping a complex password which includes a randomised alphanumeric series and special characters. For added security, users can opt for authenticator apps.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

AI Being Misused for Creating Malicious Software, Claims Canadian Cyber Official

Hackers and propagandists are wielding artificial intelligence (AI) to create malicious software, draft convincing phishing emails and spread disinformation online, Canada’s top cybersecurity official told Reuters, early evidence that the technological revolution sweeping Silicon Valley has also been adopted by cybercriminals.

In an interview this week, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security Head Sami Khoury said that his agency had seen AI being used “in phishing emails, or crafting emails in a more focused way, in malicious code (and) in misinformation and disinformation.” 

Khoury did not provide details or evidence, but his assertion that cybercriminals were already using AI adds an urgent note to the chorus of concern over the use of the emerging technology by rogue actors. 

In recent months several cyber watchdog groups have published reports warning about the hypothetical risks of AI — especially the fast-advancing language processing programs known as large language models (LLMs), which draw on huge volumes of text to craft convincing-sounding dialogue, documents and more. 

In March, the European police organization Europol published a report saying that models such as OpenAI‘s ChatGPT had made it possible “to impersonate an organisation or individual in a highly realistic manner even with only a basic grasp of the English language.” The same month, Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre said in a blog post that there was a risk that criminals “might use LLMs to help with cyber attacks beyond their current capabilities.”

Cybersecurity researchers have demonstrated a variety of potentially malicious use cases and some now say they are beginning to see suspected AI-generated content in the wild. Last week, a former hacker said he had discovered an LLM trained on malicious material and asked it to draft a convincing attempt to trick someone into making a cash transfer.

The LLM responded with a three paragraph email asking its target for help with an urgent invoice. 

“I understand this may be short notice,” the LLM said, “but this payment is incredibly important and needs to be done in the next 24 hours.”

Khoury said that while the use of AI to draft malicious code was still in its early stages — “there’s still a way to go because it takes a lot to write a good exploit” — the concern was that AI models were evolving so quickly that it was difficult to get a handle on their malicious potential before they were released into the wild.

“Who knows what’s coming around the corner,” he said.

Will the Nothing Phone 2 serve as the successor to the Phone 1, or will the two co-exist? We discuss the company’s recently launched handset and more on the latest episode of Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Taiwan Website Attacks Likely Caused by Chinese ‘Hacktivists’, Researchers Say

Digital attacks against Taiwanese government websites ahead of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taipei on Tuesday were likely launched by Chinese activist hackers, or “hacktivists,” a cybersecurity research organisation said. The website of Taiwan’s presidential office was targeted by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Tuesday and was at one point malfunctioning, the office said in a statement.

Access to the website was restored within about 20 minutes of the attack, the statement said. Taiwanese government agencies were monitoring the situation in the face of “information warfare,” a spokesperson later added.

A government portal website and Taiwan’s foreign ministry website were also taken offline and appeared inaccessible late on Tuesday. The foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

DDoS attacks work by directing high volumes of internet traffic towards targeted servers in a relatively unsophisticated bid to knock them offline.

“These are uncoordinated, random, moral-less attacks against websites that Chinese hacktivists use to get their message across,” said Johannes Ullrich, Dean of Research at the SANS Technology Institute, a cybersecurity education and research organisation.

“Usually it continues for a few days, but they often lose interest within a week. Many of the attacks are motivated by what is written in the Chinese press,” Ullrich added.

The disruptive digital blitz came from hundreds of thousands of IP addresses, tied to devices registered within Chinese commercial internet space, Ullrich said.

A similar cohort of Chinese IP addresses had been scanning the internet for low level, easily exploitable vulnerabilities since Friday, he added, and did not match the usual activity carried out by Chinese government hackers.

© Thomson Reuters 2022

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Exit mobile version