The IRS “Dirty Dozen” – Top Tax Season Scams to Steer Clear of This Year
Who loves tax season besides accountants? Scammers. Emotions can run high during tax time. Even if you’re pretty sure you did everything right, you may still have a few doubts kicking around. Did I file correctly? Did I claim the right deductions? Will I get audited? As it turns out, these are the very same […] more…New Year, New You: Start Fresh With McAfee Protection Score
Are you an online oversharer? Do you give your full birthday to all your online shopping accounts? Have a few companies you have accounts with been breached but you didn’t take any action at the time? If you have bad digital habits, now is an excellent time to reset your digital presence. In isolation, these […] more…Unwrapping Some of the Holiday Season’s Biggest Scams
Even with the holidays in full swing, scammers won’t let up. In fact, it’s high time for some of their nastiest cons as people travel, donate to charities, and simply try to enjoy their time with friends and family. Unfortunate as it is, scammers see this time of year as a tremendous opportunity to profit. […] more…How to Quickly Remove Malware in 2022
If you’re like most people, you probably use your computer for most of your online activities. It’s amazing what the internet can do to make our lives easier. But if you’ve spent any time online, you know the internet also comes with some risks. Malware (or malicious software) is one risk of living a connected […] more…Spam and phishing in Q3 2021
Quarterly highlights Scamming championship: sports-related fraud This summer and early fall saw some major international sporting events. The delayed Euro 2020 soccer tournament was held in June and July, followed by the equally delayed Tokyo Olympics in August. Q3 2021 also featured several F1 Grand Prix races. There was no way that cybercriminals and profiteers could […] more…Great R packages for data import, wrangling, and visualization
The table below shows my favorite go-to R packages for data import, wrangling, visualization and analysis — plus a few miscellaneous tasks tossed in. The package names in the table are clickable if you want more information. To find out more about a package once you’ve installed it, type help(package = "packagename") in your R […] more…How to Prepare for Your Child’s First Smartphone
If only more things in life came with training wheels; a child’s first smartphone could certainly use some. Like taking off the training wheels and riding out into the neighborhood for the first time, a smartphone opens an entirely new world for children. There are apps, social media, group chats with friends, TikTok stars, and the joy of simply being “in” with their classmates and […] more…Financial Cyberthreats in 2020
2020 was challenging for everyone: companies, regulators, individuals. Due to the limitations imposed by the epidemiological situation, particular categories of users and businesses were increasingly targeted by cybercriminals. While we were adjusting to remote work and the rest of the new conditions, so were scammers. As a result, 2020 was extremely eventful in terms of digital […] more…Lets Have “The Talk” About the Internet: 7 Conversation-Starters for Staying Safer Online
It’s Time to Have “The Talk” About the Internet: 7 Conversation-Starters for Staying Much Safer Online With Safer Internet Day upon us, it’s time to have “The Talk.” The internet talk, that is. What’s the internet talk? It’s a candid conversation about how safe we’re really being when we go online, as opposed to how […] more…Take It Personally: Ten Tips for Protecting Your Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
Take It Personally: Ten Tips for Protecting Your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Seems like we always have a connected device somewhere within arm’s reach, whether it’s a smartphone, laptop, tablet, a wearable, or some combination of them all. In a way, we bring the internet along with us nearly wherever we go. Yet there’s something […] more…Ransomware: The Digital Plague that Still Persists
Ransomware began its reign of cyber terror in 1989 and remains a serious and dangerous threat today. In layman’s terms, ransomware is malware that employs encryption to lock users out of their devices or block access to critical data or files. A sum of money, or ransom, is then demanded in return for access to […] more…FIN6 Compromised E-commerce Platform via Magecart to Inject Credit Card Skimmers Into Thousands of Online Shops
We discovered that the online credit card skimming attack known as Magecart or E-Skimming was actively operating on 3,126 online shops. Our data shows that the attack started on September 7, 2019. All of the impacted online shops are hosted on the cloud platform of the e-commerce service provider “Volusion,” one of the top e-commerce […] more…The Seven Main Phishing Lures of Cybercriminals
One of the oldest tricks in the cybercrime playbook is phishing. It first hit the digital scene in 1995, at a time when millions flocked to America Online (AOL) every day. And if we know one thing about cybercriminals, it’s that they tend to follow the masses. In earlier iterations, phishing attempts were easy to […] more…Assessing the impact of protection from web miners
Brief summary: We present the results of evaluating the positive economic and environmental impact of blocking web miners with Kaspersky products. The total power saving can be calculated with known accuracy using the formula <w>·N, where <w> is the average value of the increase in power consumption of the user device during web mining, and […] more…IT threat evolution Q1 2019
Targeted attacks and malware campaigns Go Zebrocy Zebrocy was first observed being used as a Sofacy backdoor in 2015. However, the collection of cases where this tool has been used mean that we consider it a subset of activity in its own right. On the basis of this threat actor’s past behaviour, we predicted last […] more…Mirrorthief Group Uses Magecart Skimming Attack to Hit Hundreds of Campus Online Stores in US and Canada
We uncovered a recent activity involving the notorious online credit card skimming attack known as Magecart. The attack, facilitated by a new cybercrime group, impacted 201 online campus stores in the United States and Canada. We started detecting the attacks against multiple campus store websites on April 14, during which the sites were injected with […] more…More information
- Android Malware Appears Linked to Lazarus Cybercrime Group
- Understanding the WordPress Security Plugin Ecosystem
- Microsoft scores biggest patent licensee yet: Foxconn
- Four High Severity DoS Flaws Patched in BIND
- Flaws Allowed Facebook Account Hacking via Oculus App
- Debate rages over revelation of NSA spying secrets
- Update: Software Upgrade Affecting DIMC and FPS – January 7, 2014
- HOAX ALERT! Facebook ‘deadline’ on making your content public is fake
- Library Service interruption – The CAT: Wednesday, 12/23/15 at 5:15 pm. – Monday 12/28/15
- Resolved: Admissions.psu.edu web site degraded