PODCAST VO SCRIPT, [unpublished] Haje: The dark web is a lot of things; particularly user-friendly ain’t one of them. The other day, I got an amazing tip about ‘Dark Web Gift Shop,’ which tries to at least give you a little bit of a reward for your struggles. Haje: The founders say that: [AI generated voice]: The Dark Web is kind of a hassle to get to, so we think visitors should leave with a souvenir. Haje: That… is actually completely hilarious to me, so I can’t really even argue with them. The site sells tote bags, t-shirts and some random other tat. Haje: If you want to visit the sit ..read more

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans to send four agents who specialize in investigating cybercrime to Australia, Singapore, Colombia, and Germany starting this summer. These four new positions represent a significant increase in the IRS’s global efforts to fight cybercrimes, such as those involving cryptocurrency, decentralized finance and crypto laundering services. In the last several years, agents working for the IRS’s Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) branch have had a key role in investigating crimes on the dark web as part of landmark international operations: the shutdown of the drug ..read more

“That was the only path through this darkness,” says U.S. prosecutor Zia Faruqui. “The darker the darknet gets, the way that you shine the light is following the money.” In “Tracers in the Dark,” Andy Greenberg, a senior writer at Wired, takes a historical look at what he calls Bitcoin’s “siren song: the promise of untraceable money.” He begins by carefully tracing back through the history of law enforcement’s crypto investigations, and finds their very first success. It was 2014, and IRS special agent Tigran Gambaryan was investigating a DEA agent suspected of having stolen bitcoin from Dread ..read more

Los Angeles Unified School District, or LAUSD — the second largest district in the U.S. with more than 1,000 schools and 6,000 students — confirmed this week that it was hit by a cyberattack over the weekend, disrupting access to its IT systems. Details about the incident, described as “criminal in nature” and later confirmed to be ransomware, remain vague. It’s not yet known whether data was stolen, and while LAUSD resumed classes as planned on Tuesday following the long Labor Day weekend, the impact on schools is currently unclear. LAUSD’s chief communications officer Shannon Haber has not r ..read more

Brittany Allen Contributor As Sift's Trust and Safety Architect, Brittany Allen has more than a decade of experience combating e-commerce marketplace fraud at companies such as Etsy, Airbnb, 1stDibs and letgo. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is booming in popularity, particularly among the traditional credit-wary millennial and Gen Z consumer populations. With $680 billion in transaction volume by 2025 up for grabs, fintech startups and long-standing financial institutions alike are jumping into the mix with their own offerings. But, as we’ve seen with other emerging tech trends, rapid growth lead ..read more

David Etue Contributor Share on Twitter David Etue, CEO of Nisos, has 20 years of experience at early-stage and mature companies, bringing industry perspective built from experience including security program leadership, management consulting, product management and technical implementation. Companies invest significant time and energy to integrate networks and applications after an acquisition. However, the acquiring IT, security and intelligence teams rarely have the resources or internal processes to perform investigative diligence on a target before an acquisition. Being able to do so ..read more

A former Canadian government employee accused of carrying out dozens of ransomware attacks has been extradited to the United States, with more than $28 million in bitcoin seized in connection with the case. Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins, who worked as an IT consultant for Public Works and Government Services in Canada, according to his LinkedIn profile, was extradited to the U.S. on Wednesday, where he will face multiple charges related to his alleged participation with the NetWalker ransomware group, the U.S. Justice Department announced this week. NetWalker, also known as “Mailto,” is a prolif ..read more

Twitter has become the latest tech giant to launch a dedicated Tor onion service, days after it was blocked in Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. The launch will allow users in Russia to bypass the government’s internet blocks that are stifling the flow of information across the country. Alec Muffett, a cybersecurity researcher with a long history of working with the Tor network, was behind the project, the launch of which was announced on Tuesday. Twitter’s new Tor service is based on a version of the Enterprise Onion Toolkit (EOTK), a tool that Muffett designed to help website owners ..read more

Astrix Security, an Israeli cybersecurity startup that provides access management for third-party app integrations, has emerged from stealth with $15 million in funding. The startup was co-founded in 2021 by CEO Alon Jackson and CTO Idan Gour, both former members of Israel’s famed intelligence division Unit 8200, to help organizations monitor and control the complex web of third-party apps connected to their critical systems. The number of integrations used by organizations has increased dramatically over the past two years as a result of the widespread shift to remote working and, in turn, cl ..read more

FIN7, a financially motivated Russian hacking group, has set up a fake company to lure unwitting IT specialists into supporting its continued expansion into ransomware, security researchers have found. According to researchers at Recorded Future’s Gemini Advisory unit, FIN7 — known for hacking into point-of-sale registers and stealing over $1 billion from millions of credit cards — is now operating under the guise of Bastion Secure, which claims to offer specialized public sector cybersecurity services. Bastion Secure’s website looks like the real deal. But the research found FIN7 is usin ..read more