IRS name used to phish for ID theft victims, again!

Government agencies and trusted brands are often spoofed (impersonated) in phishing attempts, which are social engineering ploys to steal personal and financial information, and or download cybernasties (malware, crimeware) on your system. Please note the cybernasties normally steal information from your computer, also.

The information culled from you, or your computer is then used to make YOU an identity theft statistic.

In the past couple of years, spoofing the IRS has become an old story, but they keep on doing it.

Here are the most recent updates on IRS phishing scams:

Updated Aug. 24, 2007 — The Internal Revenue Service today warned taxpayers of a new phishing scam, in which an e-mail purporting to come from the IRS advises taxpayers they can receive $80 by filling out an online customer satisfaction survey. The IRS urges taxpayers to ignore this solicitation and not provide any requested information. The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers through e-mail.

Updated June 19, 2007 — In another recent scam, consumers have received a "Tax Avoidance Investigation" e-mail claiming to come from the IRS' "Fraud Department" in which the recipient is asked to complete an "investigation form," for which there is a link contained in the e-mail, because of possible fraud that the recipient committed. It is believed that clicking on the link may activate a Trojan Horse.

Full IRS press release on this matter, here.

Phishing isn't limited to impersonating the IRS, the APWG (Anti-Phishing Working Group) tracks this ever growing problem and offers advice on how to avoid getting hooked, here.

Previous posts about phishing attempts impersonating the IRS can be seen, here.

China caught stealing government information again!

The Chinese, who were recently accused of poisoning pets and selling toxic toothpaste are now being accused of hacking into government computers in Germany.

Roger Boyes of the TIMESONLINE reports:

Der Spiegel, quoting senior officials from the German equivalent of Special Branch, said that the hacking operation was discovered in May. Computers in the Chancellery, the Foreign, Economics and Research ministries had been targeted. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) conducted a comprehensive search of government IT installations and prevented a further 160 giga-bytes of information being transferred to China. Commentators described it as “the biggest digital defence ever mounted by the German state”.

The information was being siphoned off almost daily by hackers in Lanzhou, northern China, in Canton province and in Beijing. The scale and the nature of the data being stolen suggest, the investigators say, that the operation must have been steered by the State and, in particular, the People’s Liberation Army.

Naturally, the Chinese are denying involvement, but this isn't the first time we've heard of them hacking into systems, or committing government/corporate espionage.

Here are a couple of posts, I wrote awhile ago where U.S. government computers were the target:

How Dangerous is China

The Hackers from China are at it AGAIN!

Last year, the FBI arrested two men stealing technology secrets and attempting to take them to China. Their press release on this matter can be seen, here.

USA Today (David J. Lynch) also did an excellent article quoting FBI sources about the problem, which can be seen, here.

We need to start considering the consequences of continuing to allow this to go on unchecked.

Roger Boyes story (worth reading), here.

Apophis - a malware tool that is smart and can steal 30,000 people's personal details

If anyone thinks our personal information is safe, think again. Panda Labs, an International security software company, recently discovered a tool, which appears to be stealing personal and financial details on a global basis.

From Panda's press release:

A version of Apophis, a tool used by cyber-crooks to handle information stolen from users infected by several variants of the Nuklus family of Trojans, stores data belonging to over 30,000 users from more than twenty countries. PandaLabs has been able to access a file with some of the stolen data. This file kept encrypted confidential data belonging to almost 1,500 people from the USA, Canada and the UK.

Surprisingly enough, this data contained, in addition to information about bank and email accounts, information such as the users’ postal address, phone number or their credit card expiry date. With this information, cyber-crooks not only can get the users’ money, but also impersonate them and use their identity to make purchases, bank transfers, etc., in their name.

In more simple terms, this gives criminals the ability to clean out your financial resources, then use your information to get more credit, which you will be hounded for when the bills aren't paid.

Besides that, stolen identities are used by illegal immigrants, criminals and some claim, terrorists to blend into society.

Even worse, this tool is considered smart -- it actively searches out the information criminals desire.

According to Panda, this tool can store over 30,000 records. That is a lot of people that can be victimized by just one of these nasty devices.

More information, including some screen shots from the Panda blog, here.

The press release can be viewed, here.

Panda also offers a free scan to see if your computer might be infected, here.

Monster.com might be sending you a letter that your information was compromised

Photo courtesy of shane_allen at Flickr

If you posted your information for a job on Monster.com, you might be getting a letter notifying you that your personal details have been compromised:

Joseph Menn, Los Angeles Times is reporting:

Monster.com said Thursday that 1.3 million users had personal information stolen by criminals who hacked into the job-placement website. The company said it would warn each of the victims by mail.

Monster parent Monster Worldwide Inc. said it identified the victims after analyzing the data found this week by computer security firm Symantec Corp., which had estimated that hundreds of thousands of people were at risk.

In this latest data breach, it is being reported that only names, addresses and e-mail addresses were stolen. This information will likely be used to lure potential job candidates into what are known as job scams.

In a job scam, a person is recruited into cashing bogus financial instruments, or laundering the proceeds of Internet crime. In most instances, these bogus employers will request a lot of personal and financial information (supposedly to vet the new employee)and this is probably where someone would put themselves at a real risk of becoming an identity theft victim.

The LA Times article also stated:

Also Thursday, some Monster users said they had received such e-mails as far back as February.

Since job scams are nothing new and Monster isn't the only site, where scammers gather information to lure people into doing their dirty work, it's very possible that the current data breach has nothing to do with the e-mails going as far back as February.

I've seen these types of e-mails going back a lot further that February.

Here is a previous post, I did with an emphasis on the social engineering aspects of job scams:

Internet criminals stealing information from job sites isn't anything new!

LA Times article, here.