Data breaches putting domestic abuse victims’ lives at risk, says UK watchdog

Councils, police forces and hospitals are putting women’s lives at risk by accidentally disclosing domestic abuse victims’ addresses to perpetrators, the UK’s information watchdog has said. John Edwards, the information commissioner, who has reprimanded seven organisations in just over a Read More …

ASEAN, China, and UNODC agree to a plan of action to address criminal scams in Southeast Asia

Senior officials from ASEAN, China and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have agreed to address transnational organized crime and trafficking in persons associated with casinos and scams. “Trafficking in persons connected to casinos and scam operations run Read More …

China to impose severe punishment on crimes of cyberbullying, defamation offenses, fabricating sexual topics

China on Monday released guidelines to severely punish cyberspace violations that target minors, involve paid posters, fabricate “sexual” topics and use artificial intelligence to disseminate illegal information. The guidelines on punishing crimes of cyberspace violence in accordance with laws were Read More …

Latest evolution of ‘pig butchering’ scam lures victim into fake mining scheme

Crypto fraud has become the dominant form of Internet-based confidence schemes over the past three years, as demonstrated by the sha zhu pan (“pig butchering”) scams Sophos researchers recently investigated. But one variant has been growing at a particularly rapid Read More …

Cyber-attacks: the apex of crime-as-a-service (IOCTA 2023)

The Spotlight Report ‘Cyber-attacks: the apex of crime-as-a-service’, examines the developments in cyber-attacks, discussing new methodologies and threats as observed by Europol’s operational analysts. It also outlines the types of criminal structures that are behind cyber-attacks, and how these increasingly Read More …

New hierarchy, heightened threat: Classiscam’s sustained global campaign

Classiscam was initially launched as a relatively straightforward scam operation. Cybercriminals created fake ads on marketplaces and classified sites, and leveraged social engineering techniques to trick users into “buying” the falsely-advertised goods or services, whether by transferring money directly to Read More …

Northern Ireland police data breach is second in weeks, force reveals

On Wednesday, PSNI revealed an earlier data breach: a police-issue laptop, documents and a spreadsheet identifying more than 200 staffers were stolen from a private vehicle in Newtownabbey, near Belfast, on July 6th. “We have contacted the officers and staff Read More …

Sha zhu pan scam uses AI chat tool to target iPhone and Android users

Over the past two years, we have been tracking a variety of scams targeting mobile device users, generally referred to as “shā zhū pán” (杀猪盘, which translates as “butcher plate”) or “Pig Butchering.” This includes a category we labelled as Read More …

IOCTA 2023: forget hackers in a hoodie, cybercrime has become a big business

Forget the cliché of a solitary figure in a hoodie hunched over a keyboard in a dark room crunching lines of codes. It is an image that no longer accurately reflects today’s cybercrime landscape, where criminals operate as business-like syndicates Read More …