A man was arrested in association to a credit card-skimming fruad, which recorded credit card information from customers at least four Alachua County gas stations.
Luis Orlando Martinez Roque, 24, was arrested in Orange County on Tuesday and awaits banishment to Alachua County.
During a joint investigation by the Gainesville Police Department, the Alachua County Sheriff's Office and the United States Secret Service, Roque was recognized as a suspect by observation video and witness accounts, according to a GPD press release. Roque (scammer) is accused of using the stolen credit card numbers to buy gas and other items, the release stated.
The Orange County Sheriff's Office arrested him while he was sleeping in his girlfriend's house. He was found with two fake cards yet to be linked with any known victims, the release stated.
The Scammer is charged with identity theft and scheme to defraud and is held on $100,000 bond.
Authorities continue to warn locals to use caution when paying for gas with credit cards. There is still a lot of work to be done while the investigation continues, the release stated.
Posted on Thursday, August 26, 2010
The Federal Reserve created this 30-second advertisement to direct consumers to free resources on avoiding foreclosure scams at www.federalreserve.gov. These include the "5 Tips for Avoiding Foreclosure Scams" and other mortgage foreclosure resources.
These 5 tips will help consumers select a reputable counselor and avoid fraudulent foreclosure scams.
1. Work only with a non-profit HUD-approved counselor. For a list of certified counselors visit www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/sfh/hcc/hcs.cfm or call 877-HUD-1515 (877-483-1515). If the name of the organization you are working with isn't on the list, then switch to one that is.
2. Don't pay an arm and a leg. Most housing counselors provide no- or low-cost counseling services. You should not have to pay hundreds, or thousands, of dollars for assistance.
3. Be wary of "guarantees." No one can ensure you good results.
4. Know what you are signing. Don't let a counselor pressure you into signing paperwork you haven't had a chance to read thoroughly or that you don't understand.
5. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Labels: 419 scam, Nigerian Scam, scam awareness tips, scam checker tool
Posted on Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Scam baiters claim that a helpful spin-off of 419 scams baiting has been the contact of false and fraudulent "lottery," "banking" and "credit" services that are often created by the 419 spam sendes to further their scams and make them seem legitimate. Some of the scam baiters specialize in hunting down and "killing" these fake sites in order to get rid of one of the tools in the scammers' arsenal.
[Full Articles...]
Labels: 419 scam, anti scam, Nigerian Scam, sacm awareness, scam baiting, scam baiting technic
Posted on Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Microsoft has won court endorsement to shut down a global network of computers which it says is guilty for more than 1.5bn spam messages every day.
A US judge approved the firm's request to shut down 277 internet domains, which it said were used to "command and control" the so-called Waledac botnet. A botnet is a network of infected computers under the control of hackers. The firm said that closing the domains would mean that up to 90,000 PCs would stop receiving orders to send out spam.
A recent study by the firm found that between 3-21 December "approximately 651 million spam e-mails attributable to Waledac were directed to Hotmail accounts alone". It said it was one of the 10 largest botnets in the US.
Machines in a botnet have usually been infected by a computer virus or worm. Typically, users do not know their machine has been hijacked. Microsoft said that although it had successfully shut down the network, thousands of computers would still be infected with malware and advised people to run anti-virus software.
The court order was part of what was called "Operation b49". Microsoft said it was the result of months of analysis and described it as a legal first. "This action has quickly and effectively cut off traffic to Waledac at the .comor domain registry level, severing the connection between the command and control centres of the botnet and most of its thousands of zombie computers around the world."
A US judge approved the firm's request to shut down 277 internet domains, which it said were used to "command and control" the so-called Waledac botnet. A botnet is a network of infected computers under the control of hackers. The firm said that closing the domains would mean that up to 90,000 PCs would stop receiving orders to send out spam.
A recent study by the firm found that between 3-21 December "approximately 651 million spam e-mails attributable to Waledac were directed to Hotmail accounts alone". It said it was one of the 10 largest botnets in the US.
Machines in a botnet have usually been infected by a computer virus or worm. Typically, users do not know their machine has been hijacked. Microsoft said that although it had successfully shut down the network, thousands of computers would still be infected with malware and advised people to run anti-virus software.
The court order was part of what was called "Operation b49". Microsoft said it was the result of months of analysis and described it as a legal first. "This action has quickly and effectively cut off traffic to Waledac at the .comor domain registry level, severing the connection between the command and control centres of the botnet and most of its thousands of zombie computers around the world."
Labels: Botnet, spam email, Spam messages
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010
As per the news reports released in the second week of January, a botnet was blocked when researchers worked in alliance with Internet Security Protocols (ISPs) to cut communications to the Lethic spamming botnet, reported darkREADING on January 11, 2010.
Rodel Mendrez, threat analyst with M86 Security, said in a blog posted January 7 that when the botnet was shutdown, the researchers were not sure about the actual size of the Lethic botnet, as per the news published by securecomputing.net.au January, 2010. But botnet is at present responsible for nearly 8-10% of spam in the firm's trap, it is figured out by M86 as a sizeable botnet.
He added that majority of command and control (C&C) servers of this botnet are hosted by a Chicago-based ISP. M86 Security also estimated that after Rustock (32.8%), Mega-D (21.6%) and Bobax (12.1%), Lethic was the fourth most common botnet. The Bagle 2 botnet was responsible for only around 1.9% of spam distributed.
Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence senior analyst at Symantec, also gave his views on Lethic's development and activity. He said that this botnet has been under observance by Symantec Hosted Services since December 31, 2009. The botnet was responsible for 2.5% of total spam volume during the month, reported SC Magazine on January 11, 2010.
Apart from the shutdown of Lethic botnet, FireEye's security experts helped in taking down the MegaD botnet in November 2009. In May 2009from the University of Californiaat Santa Barbara (USA) revealed how they had adopted an offensive approach by infiltrating Torpig botnet. This was very bold and notorious step taken by the researchers, which gave rise to debate as to what extents the researchers must go to shut down a botnet.
Such an act of shutting down Lethic botnet clearly shows the increasing extent of botnet chasers going offensive to stop cyber crooks, primarily by damaging their precious bot infrastructures.
Rodel Mendrez, threat analyst with M86 Security, said in a blog posted January 7 that when the botnet was shutdown, the researchers were not sure about the actual size of the Lethic botnet, as per the news published by securecomputing.net.au January, 2010. But botnet is at present responsible for nearly 8-10% of spam in the firm's trap, it is figured out by M86 as a sizeable botnet.
He added that majority of command and control (C&C) servers of this botnet are hosted by a Chicago-based ISP. M86 Security also estimated that after Rustock (32.8%), Mega-D (21.6%) and Bobax (12.1%), Lethic was the fourth most common botnet. The Bagle 2 botnet was responsible for only around 1.9% of spam distributed.
Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence senior analyst at Symantec, also gave his views on Lethic's development and activity. He said that this botnet has been under observance by Symantec Hosted Services since December 31, 2009. The botnet was responsible for 2.5% of total spam volume during the month, reported SC Magazine on January 11, 2010.
Apart from the shutdown of Lethic botnet, FireEye's security experts helped in taking down the MegaD botnet in November 2009. In May 2009from the University of Californiaat Santa Barbara (USA) revealed how they had adopted an offensive approach by infiltrating Torpig botnet. This was very bold and notorious step taken by the researchers, which gave rise to debate as to what extents the researchers must go to shut down a botnet.
Such an act of shutting down Lethic botnet clearly shows the increasing extent of botnet chasers going offensive to stop cyber crooks, primarily by damaging their precious bot infrastructures.
Labels: Botnet network, Lethic Spamming botnet
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010
Websense Security Labs has published its semiannual State of Internet Security statement and, as usual, it makes for pretty interesting if somewhat scary reading.
The last six months of 2009, the report is based upon the findings of the ThreatSeeker Network which is used to determine, classify and monitor global Internet threats and trends politeness of something called the Internet HoneyGrid. This includes of honeyclients and honevypots, reputation systems and advanced grid computing systems, all of which join to parse through one billion pieces of content every day while searching for security threats. Every single hour the Internet HoneyGrid scans some 40 million websites for malicious code as well as 10 million emails for unnecessary content and malicious code.The HoneyGrid have information about the Internet security threatscape for Q3/Q4 2009?
Here are the key answers:- 13.7% of searches for trending news/buzz words (as defined by Yahoo Buzz & Google Trends) led to Malicious.
- The second half of 2009 revealed a 3.3% decline in the increase of malicious Web sites evaluate to the first half of the year. Websense Security Labs considers this is due to the increased focus on Web 2.0 properties with higher traffic and multiple pages.
- However, similarities the second half of 2009 with the same period in 2008, Websense Security labs saw an standard of 225% growth in malicious Web sites.
- 71% of Web sites with malicious code are rightful sites that have been compromised.
- 95% of user-generated posts on Web sites are Unsolicited or malicious.
- Consistent with last year's, 51% of malware still connects to host Web sites registered in the United States.
- China has second most popular malware hosting country with 17%, but during the last six months Spain skipped into the third place with 15.7% despite never having been in the top 5 countries before.
- 81% of emails during the second half of the year contained a malicious link.
- Websense Security Labs recognized that 85.8% of all emails were spam.
Posted on Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Federal Trade Commission warns of acai weight loss scam
Source
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010