Category: Fight Back

Safer Internet Day

The Safer Internet Day for 2020 is Tuesday 11th February.

What does this mean?

The UK Safer Internet Centre has a website at www.saferinternet.org.uk and its aim is to make the Internet a safer place for everyone but they do concentrate on children and young people who are generally the most vulnerable.

They are a partnership between Childnet International, Internet Watch Foundation and South West Grid for Learning. It is part-funded by the European Union.

Their job is to promote safer us of the Internet and they have created Education Packs and complementary TV films tailored for 5 to 7 year olds, 7-11s, 11-14s, 14-18s and parents and carers.

These free packs include lesson plans, posters, presentations, activities and more! ​

Safer Internet Day 2020 will be celebrated globally with the theme: Together for a better internet.

2019 Safer Internet Day was bigger than ever! With more than 2,100 organisations and schools across the UK getting involved to help inspire a national conversation about using technology responsibly, respectfully, critically and creatively. The day’s events reached several millions of people – mostly young people.

If you want to take part – go to www.saferinternet.org.uk

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How to Recognise A Hacked Yahoo Mail Account

If your Yahoo mail account has been hacked, there may be signs of what has happened but it could just be that you no longer get any emails from your Yahoo account as it has been taken over by a criminal.

If you are no longer getting emails to your account, test it by sending a message from another account and see if it gets through to you.

If one of the following is true, then your account may have been hacked:-

  • Your Yahoo Mail is sending spam to your contacts.
  • You see logins from unexpected locations on your recent activity page.
  • Your account info or mail settings were changed without your knowledge.

Criminals can get your password by a number of ways, including:-

  • Simply guessing if your password is a common password
  • Using a dictionary attack if your password is any word in the common dictionary
  • Use a phishing email attack – i.e. they craft messages to you using whatever information on you they can find on the Internet
  • Phishing web site – a website that collects your login and password by pretending to be a reputable site

Once they get your login and password, they are likely to use your email account for activities such as: –

  • Sending out spam messages to millions of people and you will get return failure messages for many of those
  • Sending out scam messages and you may get blacklisted
  • Using your account login to guess other accounts and passwords and they click on the forgotten password button so the reset messages come to your account then they can change your password

If you are concerned someone may have changed the settings on your account, then access your mail settings and make sure none of your info or preferences were changed without your knowledge. Things to look for include:

  • Email filters
  • Sending name
  • Email signature
  • Reply-to address
  • Vacation response
  • Blocked addresses
  • Default sending address
  • Auto-forwarding address

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SMS Phishguard

UK Finance revealed that in the UK there were 43,875 reported cases of authorised push payment scams in 2018. These scams involve criminals tricking consumers into authorising payments to them by sending them messages pretending to be from their bank.

The fraudulent message will often claim that the recipient’s savings are at risk and they have to call a number provided immediately. The number really belongs to a scammer or a scam call centre where they trick the caller into providing their financial information – bank details, address etc.  and then steal whatever money they can get their hands on, plus they sell the details to other criminals.

Losses due to unauthorised fraud totalled almost £732 million in 2018 and further £236 million lost to authorised push payment scams.

In order to prevent millions of their customers from falling victim to these text message based phishing scams, the mobile networks EE, O2, Three and Vodafone have a new initiative called  SMS PhishGuard. This is led by Mobile UK, Mobile Ecosystem Forum and UK Finance.

EE, O2, Three and Vodafone have joined forces to combat SMS-based phishing attacks, with key objectives of

  1. raising awareness of phishing by SMS
  2. reducing the number of phishing attacks by SMS
  3. Making it easy for consumers to report any such attacks..

Starting with the banking industry and UK Government agencies, a new SMS SenderID Protection Registry scheduled will be jointly established by MEF (Mobile Ecosystem Forum), a cross-network initiative, to allow participants to register and protect the message headers they use in SMS communications to consumers. This initiative will widen to all merchants and other public sector bodies that use named SMS messages.

This new Registry will significantly reduce the ability for criminals to send fraudulent messages impersonating a bank or similar organisation, by checking whether the sender using that sender ID is the genuine registered party and will block any messages that are fraudulent.

Essentially, the mobile networks will block any attempt to send a text from that number that doesn’t come from the bank. The register will be widened to other sectors after the banking industry.

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VirusTotal URL Checker

There are numerous services that keep track of websites loaded with malware.

VirusTotal site at www.virustotal.com/gui/home will check URLs (i.e. Internet addresses) for you.

Option 1 is to upload a file and have it checked for malware

Option 2 is to type in a URL to be checked.

Then VirusTotal checks against more than 70 blacklists created by the anti-malware companies.

Virus Total Community

The VirusTotal Community is a network of interested parties that allows them to comment on files and URLs and share notes with each other. This can be useful in detecting malicious content and also in identifying false positives which are the harmless items sometimes detected as malicious by one or more scanners.

If you find a suspicious web site or receive a suspicious document of any kind then try the virustotal checker.

Do leave a comment on this post – click on the post title then scroll down to leave your comment.

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AVAST Destroy Massive Botnet

AVAST is an Internet security firm and they achieved a great fight back with the help of the French Police.

Criminals employ malware for various tasks including accessing personal information, stealing financial data such as credit card details, collecting logins and passwords, potentially encrypting files then demanding a ransom be paid and so on.

One class of malware that is less dangerous is data mining where the criminals don’t steal data but use your computers processing power for their own benefit. The side effect is that your computer will run slowly and may crash at times.

Retadup malware is a recent incarnation of this and it is used for data mining of Bitcoin cyber currency. It infects your computer and runs a programme to aid its owners in making Bitcoins.

This requires huge amounts of processing power and typically the scam involves many thousands of computers – unknown to their owners.

In this case, approximately 850,00 computers were compromised by Retadup.

The Take-Down

AVAST became involved when it discovered a design flaw in the software controlling Retadup. AVAST realised that the flaw could be used to allow someone to instruct the control to remove the malware from its victims’ computers.

AVAST are a private company and lacked the legal authority to carry this out. Most of the malware’s infrastructure was located in France, so Avast contacted French police. They received the go-ahead and the police went ahead with the operation to take control of the server and disinfect affected computers.

The police replaced the malicious command and control server with a prepared server that made connected instances of Retadup self-destruct. In the very first second of its activity, several thousand bots connected to it in order to fetch commands from the server. The Police server responded to them and disinfected the computers.

Jean-Dominique Nollet, head of the French police’s cyber unit, said the malware operators generated several million euros worth of cryptocurrency.

Remotely shutting down a malware botnet is a rare achievement — as it’s difficult to carry out.

Well done AVAST and the French authorities.

If you have any experiences with stopping botnets do let me know, by email.

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Victim Support

The Victim Support service with a website at www.victimsupport.org.uk/ is a free service for people affected by crime.

Anyone affected by crime in England or Wales can contact them for free, confidential support. Those who live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, can contact Victim Support Scotland or Victim Support NI for help.

The Support line (for free) is 08 08 16 89 111

The Victims’ Information Service (for free) is 08 08 16 89 293

Victim Support is an independent charity dedicated to supporting victims of crime and traumatic incidents in England and Wales. Their purpose is to provide specialist help to support people to cope and recover to the point where they feel they are back on track with their lives.

In 2018, they were contacted more than a million times by victims of crime, offering information, advice and support. 704,219 people visited the website and the dedicated local teams provided specialist emotional and practical support to 133,965 victims.

How Victim Support is Funded

The main source of income is from Police and Crime Commissioners and other statutory and non-statutory bodies for the essential services provided to victims.

They rely on donations to help fund projects and services for other needs, especially for the most vulnerable in society such as children and older people. Donations are vital to help them to work for a world where people affected by crime and traumatic incidents get the support they need and the respect they deserve.

They raise money for the work across England and Wales from generous donations from members of the public including donations, legacies and fundraising. They also receive money from organisations, including corporate partners, charitable trusts and foundations and other grant-making bodies.

Services

  • Information and advice
  • Immediate emotional and practical help
  • Longer term emotional and practical help
  • Advocacy
  • Peer support and group work
  • Restorative justice
  • Personal safety services
  • Help in navigating the criminal justice system

Victim Support run the National Homicide service providing a dedicated, comprehensive wrap-around service and vital independent voice for those bereaved by murder and manslaughter in England and Wales.

They champion victims’ rights and issues locally and nationally, working closely with policy-makers, commissioners, agencies in the criminal justice system, local government and other providers, partners and organisations.

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