Krebs

Cybercriminals are selling hundreds of thousands of credential sets stolen with the help of a cracked version of Acunetix, a powerful commercial web app vulnerability scanner, new research finds. The cracked software is being resold as a cloud-based attack tool by at least two different services, one of which KrebsOnSecurity traced to an information technology firm based in Turkey.

Araneida Scanner.

Cyber threat analysts at Silent Push said they recently received reports from a partner organization that identified an aggressive scanning effort against their website using an Internet address previously associated with a campaign by FIN7, a notorious Russia-based hacking group.

But on closer inspection they discovered the address contained an HTML title of “Araneida Customer Panel,” and found they could search on that text string to find dozens of unique addresses hosting the same service.

It soon became apparent that Araneida was being resold as a cloud-based service using a cracked version of Acunetix, allowing paying customers to conduct offensive reconnaissance on potential target websites, scrape user data, and find vulnerabilities for exploitation.

Silent Push also learned Araneida bundles its service with a robust proxy offering, so that customer scans appear to come from Internet addresses that are randomly selected from a large pool of available traffic relays.

The makers of Acunetix, Texas-based application security vendor Invicti Security, confirmed Silent Push’s findings, saying someone had figured out how to crack the free trial version of the software so that it runs without a valid license key.

“We have been playing cat and mouse for a while with these guys,” said Matt Sciberras, chief information security officer at Invicti.

Silent Push said Araneida is being advertised by an eponymous user on multiple cybercrime forums. The service’s Telegram channel boasts nearly 500 subscribers and explains how to use the tool for malicious purposes.

In a “Fun Facts” list posted to the channel in late September, Araneida said their service was used to take over more than 30,000 websites in just six months, and that one customer used it to buy a Porsche with the payment card data (“dumps”) they sold.

Araneida Scanner’s Telegram channel bragging about how customers are using the service for cybercrime.

“They are constantly bragging with their community about the crimes that are being committed, how it’s making criminals money,” said Zach Edwards, a senior threat researcher at Silent Push. “They are also selling bulk data and dumps which appear to have been acquired with this tool or due to vulnerabilities found with the tool.”

Silent Push also found a cracked version of Acunetix was powering at least 20 instances of a similar cloud-based vulnerability testing service catering to Mandarin speakers, but they were unable to find any apparently related sales threads about them on the dark web.

Rumors of a cracked version of Acunetix being used by attackers surfaced in June 2023 on Twitter/X, when researchers first posited a connection between observed scanning activity and Araneida.

According to an August 2023 report (PDF) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Acunetix (presumably a cracked version) is among several tools used by APT 41, a prolific Chinese state-sponsored hacking group.

THE TURKISH CONNECTION

Silent Push notes that the website where Araneida is being sold — araneida[.]co — first came online in February 2023. But a review of this Araneida nickname on the cybercrime forums shows they have been active in the criminal hacking scene since at least 2018.

A search in the threat intelligence platform Intel 471 shows a user by the name Araneida promoted the scanner on two cybercrime forums since 2022, including Breached and Nulled. In 2022, Araneida told fellow Breached members they could be reached on Discord at the username “Ornie#9811.”

According to Intel 471, this same Discord account was advertised in 2019 by a person on the cybercrime forum Cracked who used the monikers “ORN” and “ori0n.” The user “ori0n” mentioned in several posts that they could be reached on Telegram at the username “@sirorny.”

Orn advertising Araneida Scanner in Feb. 2023 on the forum Cracked. Image: Ke-la.com.

The Sirorny Telegram identity also was referenced as a point of contact for a current user on the cybercrime forum Nulled who is selling website development services, and who references araneida[.]co as one of their projects. That user, “Exorn,” has posts dating back to August 2018.

In early 2020, Exorn promoted a website called “orndorks[.]com,” which they described as a service for automating the scanning for web-based vulnerabilities. A passive DNS lookup on this domain at DomainTools.com shows that its email records pointed to the address ori0nbusiness@protonmail.com.

Constella Intelligence, a company that tracks information exposed in data breaches, finds this email address was used to register an account at Breachforums in July 2024 under the nickname “Ornie.” Constella also finds the same email registered at the website netguard[.]codes in 2021 using the password “ceza2003” [full disclosure: Constella is currently an advertiser on KrebsOnSecurity].

A search on the password ceza2003 in Constella finds roughly a dozen email addresses that used it in an exposed data breach, most of them featuring some variation on the name “altugsara,” including altugsara321@gmail.com. Constella further finds altugsara321@gmail.com was used to create an account at the cybercrime community RaidForums under the username “ori0n,” from an Internet address in Istanbul.

According to DomainTools, altugsara321@gmail.com was used in 2020 to register the domain name altugsara[.]com. Archive.org’s history for that domain shows that in 2021 it featured a website for a then 18-year-old Altuğ Şara from Ankara, Turkey.

Archive.org’s recollection of what altugsara dot com looked like in 2021.

LinkedIn finds this same altugsara[.]com domain listed in the “contact info” section of a profile for an Altug Sara from Ankara, who says he has worked the past two years as a senior software developer for a Turkish IT firm called Bilitro Yazilim.

Neither Altug Sara nor Bilitro Yazilim responded to requests for comment.

Invicti’s website states that it has offices in Ankara, but the company’s CEO said none of their employees recognized either name.

“We do have a small team in Ankara, but as far as I know we have no connection to the individual other than the fact that they are also in Ankara,” Invicti CEO Neil Roseman told KrebsOnSecurity.

Researchers at Silent Push say despite Araneida using a seemingly endless supply of proxies to mask the true location of its users, it is a fairly “noisy” scanner that will kick off a large volume of requests to various API endpoints, and make requests to random URLs associated with different content management systems.

What’s more, the cracked version of Acunetix being resold to cybercriminals invokes legacy Acunetix SSL certificates on active control panels, which Silent Push says provides a solid pivot for finding some of this infrastructure, particularly from the Chinese threat actors.

Further reading: Silent Push’s research on Araneida Scanner.

Image: Shutterstock, iHaMoo.

Adam Griffin is still in disbelief over how quickly he was robbed of nearly $500,000 in cryptocurrencies. A scammer called using a real Google phone number to warn his Gmail account was being hacked, sent email security alerts directly from google.com, and ultimately seized control over the account by convincing him to click “yes” to a Google prompt on his mobile device.

Griffin is a battalion chief firefighter in the Seattle area, and on May 6 he received a call from someone claiming they were from Google support saying his account was being accessed from Germany. A Google search on the phone number calling him — (650) 203-0000 — revealed it was an official number for Google Assistant, an AI-based service that can engage in two-way conversations.

At the same time, he received an email that came from a google.com email address, warning his Google account was compromised. The message included a “Google Support Case ID number” and information about the Google representative supposedly talking to him on the phone, stating the rep’s name as “Ashton” — the same name given by the caller.

Griffin didn’t learn this until much later, but the email he received had a real google.com address because it was sent via Google Forms, a service available to all Google Docs users that makes it easy to send surveys, quizzes and other communications.

A phony security alert Griffin received prior to his bitcoin heist, via Google Forms.

According to tripwire.com’s Graham Cluely, phishers will use Google Forms to create a security alert message, and then change the form’s settings to automatically send a copy of the completed form to any email address entered into the form. The attacker then sends an invitation to complete the form to themselves, not to their intended victim.

“So, the attacker receives the invitation to fill out the form – and when they complete it, they enter their intended victim’s email address into the form, not their own,” Cluely wrote in a December 2023 post. “The attackers are taking advantage of the fact that the emails are being sent out directly by Google Forms (from the google.com domain). It’s an established legitimate domain that helps to make the email look more legitimate and is less likely to be intercepted en route by email-filtering solutions.”

The fake Google representative was polite, patient, professional and reassuring. Ashton told Griffin he was going to receive a notification that would allow him to regain control of the account from the hackers. Sure enough, a Google prompt instantly appeared on his phone asking, “Is it you trying to recover your account?”

Adam Griffin clicked “yes,” to an account recovery notification similar to this one on May 6.

Griffin said that after receiving the pop-up prompt from Google on his phone, he felt more at ease that he really was talking to someone at Google. In reality, the thieves caused the alert to appear on his phone merely by stepping through Google’s account recovery process for Griffin’s Gmail address.

“As soon as I clicked yes, I gave them access to my Gmail, which was synched to Google Photos,” Griffin said.

Unfortunately for Griffin, years ago he used Google Photos to store an image of the secret seed phrase that was protecting his cryptocurrency wallet. Armed with that phrase, the phishers could drain all of his funds.

“From there they were able to transfer approximately $450,000 out of my Exodus wallet,” Griffin recalled.

Griffin said just minutes after giving away access to his Gmail account he received a call from someone claiming to be with Coinbase, who likewise told him someone in Germany was trying to take over his account.

Griffin said a follow-up investigation revealed the attackers had used his Gmail account to gain access to his Coinbase account from a VPN connection in California, providing the multi-factor code from his Google Authenticator app. Unbeknownst to him at the time, Google Authenticator by default also makes the same codes available in one’s Google account online.

But when the thieves tried to move $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency out of his account, Coinbase sent an email stating that the account had been locked, and that he would have to submit additional verification documents before he could do anything with it.

GRAND THEFT AUTOMATED

Just days after Griffin was robbed, a scammer impersonating Google managed to phish 45 bitcoins — approximately $4,725,000 at today’s value — from Tony, a 42-year-old professional from northern California. Tony agreed to speak about his harrowing experience on condition that his last name not be used.

Tony got into bitcoin back in 2013 and has been investing in it ever since. On the evening of May 15, 2024, Tony was putting his three- and one-year-old boys to bed when he received a message from Google about an account security issue, followed by a phone call from a “Daniel Alexander” at Google who said his account was compromised by hackers.

Tony said he had just signed up for Google’s Gemini AI (an artificial intelligence platform formerly known as “Bard”), and mistakenly believed the call was part of that service. Daniel told Tony his account was being accessed by someone in Frankfurt, Germany, and that he could evict the hacker and recover access to the account by clicking “yes” to the prompt that Google was going to send to his phone.

The Google prompt arrived seconds later. And to his everlasting regret, Tony clicked the “Yes, it’s me” button.

Then came another call, this one allegedly from security personnel at Trezor, a company that makes encrypted hardware devices made to store cryptocurrency seed phrases securely offline. The caller said someone had submitted a request to Trezor to close his account, and they forwarded Tony a message sent from his Gmail account that included his name, Social Security number, date of birth, address, phone number and email address.

Tony said he began to believe then that his Trezor account truly was compromised. The caller convinced him to “recover” his account by entering his cryptocurrency seed phrase at a phishing website (verify-trezor[.]io) that mimicked the official Trezor website.

“At this point I go into fight or flight mode,” Tony recalled. “I’ve got my kids crying, my wife is like what the heck is going on? My brain went haywire. I put my seed phrase into a phishing site, and that was it.”

Almost immediately, all of the funds he was planning to save for retirement and for his children’s college fund were drained from his account.

“I made mistakes due to being so busy and not thinking correctly,” Tony told KrebsOnSecurity. “I had gotten so far away from the security protocols in bitcoin as life had changed so much since having kids.”

Tony shared this text message exchange of him pleading with his tormentors after being robbed of 45 bitcoins.

Tony said the theft left him traumatized and angry for months.

“All I was thinking about was protecting my boys and it ended up costing me everything,” he said. “Needless to say I’m devastated and have had to do serious therapy to get through it.”

MISERY LOVES COMPANY

Tony told KrebsOnSecurity that in the weeks following the theft of his 45 bitcoins, he became so consumed with rage and shame that he was seriously contemplating suicide. Then one day, while scouring the Internet for signs that others may have been phished by Daniel, he encountered Griffin posting on Reddit about the phone number involved in his recent bitcoin theft.

Griffin said the two of them were initially suspicious of each other — exchanging cautious messages for about a week — but he decided Tony was telling the truth after contacting the FBI agent that Tony said was working his case. Comparing notes, they discovered the fake Google security alerts they received just prior to their individual bitcoin thefts referenced the same phony “Google Support Case ID” number.

Adam Griffin and Tony said they received the same Google Support Case ID number in advance of their thefts. Both were sent via Google Forms, which sends directly from the google.com domain name.

More importantly, Tony recognized the voice of “Daniel from Google” when it was featured in an interview by Junseth, a podcaster who covers cryptocurrency scams. The same voice that had coaxed Tony out of his considerable cryptocurrency holdings just days earlier also had tried to phish Junseth, who played along for several minutes before revealing he knew it was a scam.

Daniel told Junseth he was a teenager and worked with other scam callers who had all met years ago on the game Minecraft, and that he recently enjoyed a run of back-to-back Gmail account compromises that led to crypto theft paydays.

“No one gets arrested,” Daniel enthused to Junseth in the May 7 podcast, which quickly went viral on social media. “It’s almost like there’s no consequences. I have small legal side hustles, like businesses and shit that I can funnel everything through. If you were to see me in real life, I look like a regular child going to school with my backpack and shit, you’d never expect this kid is stealing all this shit.”

Daniel explained that they often use an automated bot that initiates calls to targets warning that their account is experiencing suspicious activity, and that they should press “1” to speak with a representative. This process, he explained, essentially self-selects people who are more likely to be susceptible to their social engineering schemes. [It is possible — but not certain — that this bot Daniel referenced explains the incoming call to Griffin from Google Assistant that precipitated his bitcoin heist].

Daniel told Junseth he and his co-conspirators had just scored a $1.2 million theft that was still pending on the bitcoin investment platform SwanBitcoin. In response, Junseth tagged SwanBitcoin in a post about his podcast on Twitter/X, and the CEO of Swan quickly replied that they caught the $1.2 million transaction that morning.

Apparently, Daniel didn’t appreciate having his voice broadcast to the world (or his $1.2 million bitcoin heist disrupted) because according to Junseth someone submitted a baseless copyright infringement claim about it to Soundcloud, which was hosting the recording.

The complaint alleged the recording included a copyrighted song, but that wasn’t true: Junseth later posted a raw version of the recording to Telegram, and it clearly had no music in the background. Nevertheless, Soundcloud removed the audio file.

“All these companies are very afraid of copyright,” Junseth explained in a May 2024 interview with the podcast whatbitcoindid.com, which features some of the highlights from his recorded call with Daniel.

“It’s interesting because copyright infringement really is an act that you’re claiming against the publisher, but for some reason these companies have taken a very hard line against it, so if you even claim there’s copyrighted material in it they just take it down and then they leave it to you to prove that you’re innocent,” Junseth said. “In Soundcloud’s instance, part of declaring your innocence is you have to give them your home address and everything else, and it says right on there, ‘this will be provided to the person making the copyright claim.'”

AFTERMATH

When Junseth asked how potential victims could protect themselves, Daniel explained that if the target doesn’t have their Google Authenticator synced to their Google cloud account, the scammers can’t easily pivot into the victim’s accounts at cryptocurrency exchanges, as they did with Griffin.

By default, Google Authenticator syncs all one-time codes with a Gmail user’s account, meaning if someone gains access to your Google account, they can then access all of the one-time codes handed out by your Google Authenticator app.

To change this setting, open Authenticator on your mobile device, select your profile picture, and then choose “Use without an Account” from the menu. If you disable this, it’s a good idea to keep a printed copy of one-time backup codes, and to store those in a secure place.

You may also wish to download Google Authenticator to another mobile device that you control. Otherwise, if you turn off cloud synching and lose that sole mobile device with your Google Authenticator app, it could be difficult or impossible to recover access to your account if you somehow get locked out.

Griffin told KrebsOnSecurity he had no idea it was so easy for thieves to take over his account, and to abuse so many different Google services in the process.

“I know I definitely made mistakes, but I also know Google could do a lot better job protecting people,” he said.

In response to questions from KrebsOnSecurity, Google said it can confirm that this was a narrow phishing campaign, reaching a “very small group of people.”

“We’re aware of this narrow and targeted attack, and have hardened our defenses to block recovery attempts from this actor,” the company said in a written statement, which emphasized that the real Google will never call you.

“While these types of social engineering campaigns are constantly evolving, we are continuously working to harden our systems with new tools and technical innovations, as well as sharing updated guidance with our users to stay ahead of attackers,” the statement reads.

Both Griffin and Tony say they continue to receive “account security” calls from people pretending to work for Google or one of the cryptocurrency platforms.

“It’s like you get put on some kind of list, and then those lists get recycled over and over,” Tony said.

Griffin said that for several months after his ordeal, he accepted almost every cryptocurrency scam call that came his way, playing along in the vain hope of somehow tricking the caller into revealing details about who they are in real life. But he stopped after his taunting caused one of the scammers to start threatening him personally.

“I probably shouldn’t have, but I recorded two 30-minute conversations with these guys,” Griffin said, acknowledging that maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to antagonize cybercriminals who clearly already knew everything about him. “One guy I talked to about his personal life, and then his friend called me up and said he was going to dox me and do all this other bad stuff. My FBI contact later told me not to talk to these guys anymore.”

Sound advice. So is hanging up whenever anyone calls you about a security problem with one of your accounts. Even security-conscious people tend to underestimate the complex and shifting threat from phone-based phishing scams, but they do so at their peril.

When in doubt: Hang up, look up, and call back. If your response to these types of calls involves anything other than hanging up, researching the correct phone number, and contacting the entity that claims to be calling, you may be setting yourself up for a costly and humbling learning experience.

Understand that your email credentials are more than likely the key to unlocking your entire digital identity. Be sure to use a long, unique passphrase for your email address, and never pick a passphrase that you have ever used anywhere else (not even a variation on an old password).

Finally, it’s also a good idea to take advantage of the strongest multi-factor authentication methods offered. For Gmail/Google accounts, that includes the use of passkeys or physical security keys, which are heavily phishing resistant. For Google users holding measurable sums of cryptocurrency, the most secure option is Google’s free Advanced Protection program, which includes more extensive account security features but also comes with some serious convenience trade-offs.

A financial firm registered in Canada has emerged as the payment processor for dozens of Russian cryptocurrency exchanges and websites hawking cybercrime services aimed at Russian-speaking customers, new research finds. Meanwhile, an investigation into the Vancouver street address used by this company shows it is home to dozens of foreign currency dealers, money transfer businesses, and cryptocurrency exchanges — none of which are physically located there.

Richard Sanders is a blockchain analyst and investigator who advises the law enforcement and intelligence community. Sanders spent most of 2023 in Ukraine, traveling with Ukrainian soldiers while mapping the shifting landscape of Russian crypto exchanges that are laundering money for narcotics networks operating in the region.

More recently, Sanders has focused on identifying how dozens of popular cybercrime services are getting paid by their customers, and how they are converting cryptocurrency revenues into cash. For the past several months, he’s been signing up for various cybercrime services, and then tracking where their customer funds go from there.

The 122 services targeted in Sanders’ research include some of the more prominent businesses advertising on the cybercrime forums today, such as:

-abuse-friendly or “bulletproof” hosting providers like anonvm[.]wtf, and PQHosting;
-sites selling aged email, financial, or social media accounts, such as verif[.]work and kopeechka[.]store;
-anonymity or “proxy” providers like crazyrdp[.]com and rdp[.]monster;
-anonymous SMS services, including anonsim[.]net and smsboss[.]pro.

The site Verif dot work, which processes payments through Cryptomus, sells financial accounts, including debit and credit cards.

Sanders said he first encountered some of these services while investigating Kremlin-funded disinformation efforts in Ukraine, as they are all useful in assembling large-scale, anonymous social media campaigns.

According to Sanders, all 122 of the services he tested are processing transactions through a company called Cryptomus, which says it is a cryptocurrency payments platform based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Cryptomus’ website says its parent firm — Xeltox Enterprises Ltd. (formerly certa-pay[.]com) — is registered as a money service business (MSB) with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC).

Sanders said the payment data he gathered also shows that at least 56 cryptocurrency exchanges are currently using Cryptomus to process transactions, including financial entities with names like casher[.]su, grumbot[.]com, flymoney[.]biz, obama[.]ru and swop[.]is.

These platforms are built for Russian speakers, and they each advertise the ability to anonymously swap one form of cryptocurrency for another. They also allow the exchange of cryptocurrency for cash in accounts at some of Russia’s largest banks — nearly all of which are currently sanctioned by the United States and other western nations.

A machine-translated version of Flymoney, one of dozens of cryptocurrency exchanges apparently nested at Cryptomus.

An analysis of their technology infrastructure shows that all of these exchanges use Russian email providers, and most are directly hosted in Russia or by Russia-backed ISPs with infrastructure in Europe (e.g. Selectel, Netwarm UK, Beget, Timeweb and DDoS-Guard). The analysis also showed nearly all 56 exchanges used services from Cloudflare, a global content delivery network based in San Francisco.

“Purportedly, the purpose of these platforms is for companies to accept cryptocurrency payments in exchange for goods or services,” Sanders told KrebsOnSecurity. “Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to find any goods for sale with websites using Cryptomus, and the services appear to fall into one or two different categories: Facilitating transactions with sanctioned Russian banks, and platforms providing the infrastructure and means for cyber attacks.”

Cryptomus did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

PHANTOM ADDRESSES?

The Cryptomus website and its FINTRAC listing say the company’s registered address is Suite 170, 422 Richards St. in Vancouver, BC. This address was the subject of an investigation published in July by CTV National News and the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF), which documented dozens of cases across Canada where multiple MSBs are incorporated at the same address, often without the knowledge or consent of the location’s actual occupant.

This building at 422 Richards St. in downtown Vancouver is the registered address for 90 money services businesses, including 10 that have had their registrations revoked. Image: theijf.org/msb-cluster-investigation.

Their inquiry found 422 Richards St. was listed as the registered address for at least 76 foreign currency dealers, eight MSBs, and six cryptocurrency exchanges. At that address is a three-story building that used to be a bank and now houses a massage therapy clinic and a co-working space. But they found none of the MSBs or currency dealers were paying for services at that co-working space.

The reporters found another collection of 97 MSBs clustered at an address for a commercial office suite in Ontario, even though there was no evidence these companies had ever arranged for any business services at that address.

Peter German, a former deputy commissioner for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who authored two reports on money laundering in British Columbia, told the publications it goes against the spirit of Canada’s registration requirements for such businesses, which are considered high-risk for money laundering and terrorist financing.

“If you’re able to have 70 in one building, that’s just an abuse of the whole system,” German said.

Ten MSBs registered to 422 Richard St. had their registrations revoked. One company at 422 Richards St. whose registration was revoked this year had a director with a listed address in Russia, the publications reported. “Others appear to be directed by people who are also directors of companies in Cyprus and other high-risk jurisdictions for money laundering,” they wrote.

A review of FINTRAC’s registry (.CSV) shows many of the MSBs at 422 Richards St. are international money transfer or remittance services to countries like Malaysia, India and Nigeria. Some act as currency exchanges, while others appear to sell merchant accounts and online payment services. Still, KrebsOnSecurity could find no obvious connections between the 56 Russian cryptocurrency exchanges identified by Sanders and the dozens of payment companies that FINTRAC says share an address with the Cryptomus parent firm Xeltox Enterprises.

SANCTIONS EVASION

In August 2023, Binance and some of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges responded to sanctions against Russia by cutting off many Russian banks and restricting Russian customers to transactions in Rubles only. Sanders said prior to that change, most of the exchanges currently served by Cryptomus were handling customer funds with their own self-custodial cryptocurrency wallets.

By September 2023, Sanders said he found the exchanges he was tracking had all nested themselves like Matryoshka dolls at Cryptomus, which adds a layer of obfuscation to all transactions by generating a new cryptocurrency wallet for each order.

“They all simply moved to Cryptomus,” he said. “Cryptomus generates new wallets for each order, rendering ongoing attribution to require transactions with high fees each time.”

“Exchanges like Binance and OKX removing Sberbank and other sanctioned banks and offboarding Russian users did not remove the ability of Russians to transact in and out of cryptocurrency easily,” he continued. “In fact, it’s become easier, because the instant-swap exchanges do not even have Know Your Customer rules. The U.S. sanctions resulted in the majority of Russian instant exchanges switching from their self-custodial wallets to platforms, especially Cryptomus.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin in August signed a new law legalizing cryptocurrency mining and allowing the use of cryptocurrency for international payments. The Russian government’s embrace of cryptocurrency was a remarkable pivot: Bloomberg notes that as recently as January 2022, just weeks before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the central bank proposed a blanket ban on the use and creation of cryptocurrencies.

In a report on Russia’s cryptocurrency ambitions published in September, blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis said Russia’s move to integrate crypto into its financial system may improve its ability to bypass the U.S.-led financial system and to engage in non-dollar denominated trade.

“Although it can be hard to quantify the true impact of certain sanctions actions, the fact that Russian officials have singled out the effect of sanctions on Moscow’s ability to process cross-border trade suggests that the impact felt is great enough to incite urgency to legitimize and invest in alternative payment channels it once decried,” Chainalysis assessed.

Asked about its view of activity on Cryptomus, Chainanlysis said Cryptomus has been used by criminals of all stripes for laundering money and/or the purchase of goods and services.

“We see threat actors engaged in ransomware, narcotics, darknet markets, fraud, cybercrime, sanctioned entities and jurisdictions, and hacktivism making deposits to Cryptomus for purchases but also laundering the services using Cryptomos payment API,” the company said in a statement.

SHELL GAMES

It is unclear if Cryptomus and/or Xeltox Enterprises have any presence in Canada at all. A search in the United Kingdom’s Companies House registry for Xeltox’s former name — Certa Payments Ltd. — shows an entity by that name incorporated at a mail drop in London in December 2023.

The sole shareholder and director of that company is listed as a 25-year-old Ukrainian woman in the Czech Republic named Vira Krychka. Ms. Krychka was recently appointed the director of several other new U.K. firms, including an entity created in February 2024 called Globopay UAB Ltd, and another called WS Management and Advisory Corporation Ltd. Ms. Krychka did not respond to a request for comment.

WS Management and Advisory Corporation bills itself as the regulatory body that exclusively oversees licenses of cryptocurrencies in the jurisdiction of Western Sahara, a disputed territory in northwest Africa. Its website says the company assists applicants with bank setup and formation, online gaming licenses, and the creation and licensing of foreign exchange brokers. One of Certa Payments’ former websites — certa[.]website — also shared a server with 12 other domains, including rasd-state[.]ws, a website for the Central Reserve Authority of the Western Sahara.

The website crasadr dot com, the official website of the Central Reserve Authority of Western Sahara.

This business registry from the Czech Republic indicates Ms. Krychka works as a director at an advertising and marketing firm called Icon Tech SRO, which was previously named Blaven Technologies (Blaven’s website says it is an online payment service provider).

In August 2024, Icon Tech changed its name again to Mezhundarondnaya IBU SRO, which describes itself as an “experienced company in IT consulting” that is based in Armenia. The same registry says Ms. Krychka is somehow also a director at a Turkish investment venture. So much business acumen at such a young age!

For now, Canada remains an attractive location for cryptocurrency businesses to set up shop, at least on paper. The IJF and CTV News found that as of February 2024, there were just over 3,000 actively registered MSBs in Canada, 1,247 of which were located at the same building as at least one other MSB.

“That analysis does not include the roughly 2,700 MSBs whose registrations have lapsed, been revoked or otherwise stopped,” they observed. “If they are included, then a staggering 2,061 out of 5,705 total MSBs share a building with at least one other MSB.”

Microsoft today released updates to plug at least 70 security holes in Windows and Windows software, including one vulnerability that is already being exploited in active attacks.

The zero-day seeing exploitation involves CVE-2024-49138, a security weakness in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) driver — used by applications to write transaction logs — that could let an authenticated attacker gain “system” level privileges on a vulnerable Windows device.

The security firm Rapid7 notes there have been a series of zero-day elevation of privilege flaws in CLFS over the past few years.

“Ransomware authors who have abused previous CLFS vulnerabilities will be only too pleased to get their hands on a fresh one,” wrote Adam Barnett, lead software engineer at Rapid7. “Expect more CLFS zero-day vulnerabilities to emerge in the future, at least until Microsoft performs a full replacement of the aging CLFS codebase instead of offering spot fixes for specific flaws.”

Elevation of privilege vulnerabilities accounted for 29% of the 1,009 security bugs Microsoft has patched so far in 2024, according to a year-end tally by Tenable; nearly 40 percent of those bugs were weaknesses that could let attackers run malicious code on the vulnerable device.

Rob Reeves, principal security engineer at Immersive Labs, called special attention to CVE-2024-49112, a remote code execution flaw in the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) service on every version of Windows since Windows 7. CVE-2024-49112 has been assigned a CVSS (badness) score of 9.8 out of 10.

“LDAP is most commonly seen on servers that are Domain Controllers inside a Windows network and LDAP must be exposed to other servers and clients within an enterprise environment for the domain to function,” Reeves said. “Microsoft hasn’t released specific information about the vulnerability at present, but has indicated that the attack complexity is low and authentication is not required.”

Tyler Reguly at the security firm Fortra had a slightly different 2024 patch tally for Microsoft, at 1,088 vulnerabilities, which he said was surprisingly similar to the 1,063 vulnerabilities resolved in 2023 and the 1,119 vulnerabilities resolved in 2022.

“If nothing else, we can say that Microsoft is consistent,” Reguly said. “While it would be nice to see the number of vulnerabilities each year decreasing, at least consistency lets us know what to expect.”

If you’re a Windows end user and your system is not set up to automatically install updates, please take a minute this week to run Windows Update, preferably after backing up your system and/or important data.

System admins should keep an eye on AskWoody.com, which usually has the details if any of the Patch Tuesday fixes are causing problems. In the meantime, if you run into any problems applying this month’s fixes, please drop a note about in the comments below.

In January 2022, KrebsOnSecurity identified a Russian man named Mikhail Matveev as “Wazawaka,” a cybercriminal who was deeply involved in the formation and operation of multiple ransomware groups. The U.S. government indicted Matveev as a top ransomware purveyor a year later, offering $10 million for information leading to his arrest. Last week, the Russian government reportedly arrested Matveev and charged him with creating malware used to extort companies.

An FBI wanted poster for Matveev.

Matveev, a.k.a. “Wazawaka” and “Boriselcin” worked with at least three different ransomware gangs that extorted hundreds of millions of dollars from companies, schools, hospitals and government agencies, U.S. prosecutors allege.

Russia’s interior ministry last week issued a statement saying a 32-year-old hacker had been charged with violating domestic laws against the creation and use of malicious software. The announcement didn’t name the accused, but the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti cited anonymous sources saying the man detained is Matveev.

Matveev did not respond to requests for comment. Daryna Antoniuk at TheRecord reports that a security researcher said on Sunday they had contacted Wazawaka, who confirmed being charged and said he’d paid two fines, had his cryptocurrency confiscated, and is currently out on bail pending trial.

Matveev’s hacker identities were remarkably open and talkative on numerous cybercrime forums. Shortly after being identified as Wazawaka by KrebsOnSecurity in 2022, Matveev published multiple selfie videos on Twitter/X where he acknowledged using the Wazawaka moniker and mentioned several security researchers by name (including this author). More recently, Matveev’s X profile (@ransomboris) posted a picture of a t-shirt that features the U.S. government’s “Wanted” poster for him.

An image tweeted by Matveev showing the Justice Department’s wanted poster for him on a t-shirt. image: x.com/vxunderground

The golden rule of cybercrime in Russia has always been that as long as you never hack, extort or steal from Russian citizens or companies, you have little to fear of arrest. Wazawaka claimed he zealously adhered to this rule as a personal and professional mantra.

“Don’t shit where you live, travel local, and don’t go abroad,” Wazawaka wrote in January 2021 on the Russian-language cybercrime forum Exploit. “Mother Russia will help you. Love your country, and you will always get away with everything.”

Still, Wazawaka may not have always stuck to that rule. At several points throughout his career, Wazawaka claimed he made good money stealing accounts from drug dealers on darknet narcotics bazaars.

Cyber intelligence firm Intel 471 said Matveev’s arrest raises more questions than answers, and that Russia’s motivation here likely goes beyond what’s happening on the surface.

“It’s possible this is a shakedown by Kaliningrad authorities of a local internet thug who has tens of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency,” Intel 471 wrote in an analysis published Dec. 2. “The country’s ingrained, institutional corruption dictates that if dues aren’t paid, trouble will come knocking. But it’s usually a problem money can fix.

Intel 471 says while Russia’s court system is opaque, Matveev will likely be open about the proceedings, particularly if he pays a toll and is granted passage to continue his destructive actions.

“Unfortunately, none of this would mark meaningful progress against ransomware,” they concluded.

Although Russia traditionally hasn’t put a lot of effort into going after cybercriminals within its borders, it has brought a series of charges against alleged ransomware actors this year. In January, four men tied to the REvil ransomware group were sentenced to lengthy prison terms. The men were among 14 suspected REvil members rounded up by Russia in the weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Earlier this year, Russian authorities arrested at least two men for allegedly operating the short-lived Sugarlocker ransomware program in 2021. Aleksandr Ermakov and Mikhail Shefel (now legally Mikhail Lenin) ran a security consulting business called Shtazi-IT. Shortly before his arrest, Ermakov became the first ever cybercriminal sanctioned by Australia, which alleged he stole and leaked data on nearly 10 million customers of the Australian health giant Medibank.

In December 2023, KrebsOnSecurity identified Lenin as “Rescator,” the nickname used by the cybercriminal responsible for selling more than 100 million payment cards stolen from customers of Target and Home Depot in 2013 and 2014. Last month, Shefel admitted in an interview with KrebsOnSecurity that he was Rescator, and claimed his arrest in the Sugarlocker case was payback for reporting the son of his former boss to the police.

Ermakov was sentenced to two years probation. But on the same day my interview with Lenin was published here, a Moscow court declared him insane, and ordered him to undergo compulsory medical treatment, The Record’s Antoniuk notes.

Phishing attacks increased nearly 40 percent in the year ending August 2024, with much of that growth concentrated at a small number of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) — such as .shop, .top, .xyz — that attract scammers with rock-bottom prices and no meaningful registration requirements, new research finds. Meanwhile, the nonprofit entity that oversees the domain name industry is moving forward with plans to introduce a slew of new gTLDs.

Image: Shutterstock.

A study on phishing data released by Interisle Consulting finds that new gTLDs introduced in the last few years command just 11 percent of the market for new domains, but accounted for roughly 37 percent of cybercrime domains reported between September 2023 and August 2024.

Interisle sources data about cybercrime domains from anti-spam organizations, including the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE), and the Messaging, Malware, and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG).

The study finds that while .com and .net domains made up approximately half of all domains registered in the past year (more than all of the other TLDs combined) they accounted for just over 40 percent of all cybercrime domains. Interisle says an almost equal share — 37 percent — of cybercrime domains were registered through new gTLDs.

Spammers and scammers gravitate toward domains in the new gTLDs because these registrars tend to offer cheap or free registration with little to no account or identity verification requirements. For example, among the gTLDs with the highest cybercrime domain scores in this year’s study, nine offered registration fees for less than $1, and nearly two dozen offered fees of less than $2.00. By comparison, the cheapest price identified for a .com domain was $5.91.

Currently, there are around 2,500 registrars authorized to sell domains by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the California nonprofit that oversees the domain industry.

The top 5 new gTLDs, ranked by cybercrime domains reported. Image: Interisle Cybercrime Supply Chain 2014.

Incredibly, despite years of these reports showing phishers heavily abusing new gTLDs, ICANN is shuffling forward on a plan to introduce even more of them. ICANN’s proposed next round envisions accepting applications for new gTLDs in 2026.

John Levine is author of the book “The Internet for Dummies” and president of CAUCE. Levine said adding more TLDs without a much stricter registration policy will likely further expand an already plentiful greenfield for cybercriminals.

“The problem is that ICANN can’t make up their mind whether they are the neutral nonprofit regulator or just the domain speculator trade association,” Levine told KrebsOnSecurity. “But they act a lot more like the latter.”

Levine said the vast majority of new gTLDs have a few thousand domains — a far cry from the number of registrations they would need just to cover the up-front costs of operating a new gTLD (~$180,000-$300,000). New gTLD registrars can quickly attract customers by selling domains cheaply to customers who buy domains in bulk, but that tends to be a losing strategy.

“Selling to criminals and spammers turns out to be lousy business,” Levine said. “You can charge whatever you want on the first year, but you have to charge list price on domain renewals. And criminals and spammers never renew. So if it sounds like the economics makes no sense it’s because the economics makes no sense.”

In virtually all previous spam reports, Interisle found the top brands referenced in phishing attacks were the largest technology companies, including Apple, Facebook, Google and PayPal. But this past year, Interisle found the U.S. Postal Service was by far the most-phished entity, with more than four times the number of phishing domains as the second most-frequent target (Apple).

At least some of that increase is likely from a prolific cybercriminal using the nickname Chenlun, who has been selling phishing kits targeting domestic postal services in the United States and at least a dozen other countries.

Interisle says an increasing number of phishers are eschewing domain registrations altogether, and instead taking advantage of subdomain providers like blogspot.com, pages.dev, and weebly.com. The report notes that cyberattacks hosted at subdomain provider services can be tough to mitigate, because only the subdomain provider can disable malicious accounts or take down malicious web pages.

“Any action upstream, such as blocking the second-level domain, would have an impact across the provider’s whole customer base,” the report observes.

Interisle tracked more than 1.18 million instances of subdomains used for phishing in the past year (a 114 percent increase), and found more than half of those were subdomains at blogspot.com and other services operated by Google.

“Many of these services allow the creation of large numbers of accounts at one time, which is highly exploited by criminals,” the report concludes. “Subdomain providers should limit the number of subdomains (user accounts) a customer can create at one time and suspend automated, high-volume automated account sign-ups – especially using free services.”

Two men have been arrested for allegedly stealing data from and extorting dozens of companies that used the cloud data storage company Snowflake, but a third suspect — a prolific hacker known as Kiberphant0m — remains at large and continues to publicly extort victims. However, this person’s identity may not remain a secret for long: A careful review of Kiberphant0m’s daily chats across multiple cybercrime personas suggests they are a U.S. Army soldier who is or was recently stationed in South Korea.

Kiberphant0m’s identities on cybercrime forums and on Telegram and Discord chat channels have been selling data stolen from customers of the cloud data storage company Snowflake. At the end of 2023, malicious hackers discovered that many companies had uploaded huge volumes of sensitive customer data to Snowflake accounts that were protected with nothing more than a username and password (no multi-factor authentication required).

After scouring darknet markets for stolen Snowflake account credentials, the hackers began raiding the data storage repositories for some of the world’s largest corporations. Among those was AT&T, which disclosed in July that cybercriminals had stolen personal information, phone and text message records for roughly 110 million people.  Wired.com reported in July that AT&T paid a hacker $370,000 to delete stolen phone records.

On October 30, Canadian authorities arrested Alexander Moucka, a.k.a. Connor Riley Moucka of Kitchener, Ontario, on a provisional arrest warrant from the United States, which has since indicted him on 20 criminal counts connected to the Snowflake breaches. Another suspect in the Snowflake hacks, John Erin Binns, is an American who is currently incarcerated in Turkey.

A surveillance photo of Connor Riley Moucka, a.k.a. “Judische” and “Waifu,” dated Oct 21, 2024, 9 days before Moucka’s arrest. This image was included in an affidavit filed by an investigator with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Investigators say Moucka, who went by the handles Judische and Waifu, had tasked Kiberphant0m with selling data stolen from Snowflake customers who refused to pay a ransom to have their information deleted. Immediately after news broke of Moucka’s arrest, Kiberphant0m was clearly furious, and posted on the hacker community BreachForums what they claimed were the AT&T call logs for President-elect Donald J. Trump and for Vice President Kamala Harris.

“In the event you do not reach out to us @ATNT all presidential government call logs will be leaked,” Kiberphant0m threatened, signing his post with multiple “#FREEWAIFU” tags. “You don’t think we don’t have plans in the event of an arrest? Think again.”

On the same day, Kiberphant0m posted what they claimed was the “data schema” from the U.S. National Security Agency.

“This was obtained from the ATNT Snowflake hack which is why ATNT paid an extortion,” Kiberphant0m wrote in a thread on BreachForums. “Why would ATNT pay Waifu for the data when they wouldn’t even pay an extortion for over 20M+ SSNs?”

Kiberphant0m posting what he claimed was a “data schema” stolen from the NSA via AT&T.

Also on Nov. 5, Kiberphant0m offered call logs stolen from Verizon’s push-to-talk (PTT) customers — mainly U.S. government agencies and emergency first responders. On Nov. 9, Kiberphant0m posted a sales thread on BreachForums offering a “SIM-swapping” service targeting Verizon PTT customers. In a SIM-swap, fraudsters use credentials that are phished or stolen from mobile phone company employees to divert a target’s phone calls and text messages to a device they control.

MEET ‘BUTTHOLIO’

Kiberphant0m joined BreachForums in January 2024, but their public utterances on Discord and Telegram channels date back to at least early 2022. On their first post to BreachForums, Kiberphant0m said they could be reached at the Telegram handle @cyb3rph4nt0m.

A review of @cyb3rph4nt0m shows this user has posted more than 4,200 messages since January 2024. Many of these messages were attempts to recruit people who could be hired to deploy a piece of malware that enslaved host machines in an Internet of Things (IoT) botnet.

On BreachForums, Kiberphant0m has sold the source code to “Shi-Bot,” a custom Linux DDoS botnet based on the Mirai malware. Kiberphant0m had few sales threads on BreachForums prior to the Snowflake attacks becoming public in May, and many of those involved databases stolen from companies in South Korea.

On June 5, 2024, a Telegram user by the name “Buttholio” joined the fraud-focused Telegram channel “Comgirl” and claimed to be Kiberphant0m. Buttholio made the claim after being taunted as a nobody by another denizen of Comgirl, referring to their @cyb3rph4nt0m account on Telegram and the Kiberphant0m user on cybercrime forums.

“Type ‘kiberphant0m’ on google with the quotes,” Buttholio told another user. “I’ll wait. Go ahead. Over 50 articles. 15+ telecoms breached. I got the IMSI number to every single person that’s ever registered in Verizon, Tmobile, ATNT and Verifone.”

On Sept. 17, 2023, Buttholio posted in a Discord chat room dedicated to players of the video game Escape from Tarkov. “Come to Korea, servers there is pretty much no extract camper or cheater,” Buttholio advised.

In another message that same day in the gaming Discord, Buttholio told others they bought the game in the United States, but that they were playing it in Asia.

“USA is where the game was purchased from, server location is actual in game servers u play on. I am a u.s. soldier so i bought it in the states but got on rotation so i have to use asian servers,” they shared.

‘REVERSESHELL’

The account @Kiberphant0m was assigned the Telegram ID number 6953392511. A review of this ID at the cyber intelligence platform Flashpoint shows that on January 4, 2024 Kibertphant0m posted to the Telegram channel “Dstat,” which is populated by cybercriminals involved in launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and selling DDoS-for-hire services [Full disclosure: Flashpoint is currently an advertiser on this website].

Immediately after Kiberphant0m logged on to the Dstat channel, another user wrote “hi buttholio,” to which Kiberphant0m replied with an affirmative greeting “wsg,” or “what’s good.” On Nov. 1, Dstat’s website dstat[.]cc was seized as part of “Operation PowerOFF,” an international law enforcement action against DDoS services.

Flashpoint’s data shows that @kiberphant0m told a fellow member of Dstat on April 10, 2024 that their alternate Telegram username was “@reverseshell,” and did the same two weeks later in the Telegram chat The Jacuzzi. The Telegram ID for this account is 5408575119.

Way back on Nov. 15, 2022, @reverseshell told a fellow member of a Telegram channel called Cecilio Chat that they were a soldier in the U.S. Army. This user also shared the following image of someone pictured waist-down in military fatigues, with a camouflaged backpack at their feet:

Kiberphant0m’s apparent alias ReverseShell posted this image on a Telegram channel Cecilio Chat, on Nov. 15, 2022. Image: Flashpoint.

In September 2022, Reverseshell was embroiled in an argument with another member who had threatened to launch a DDoS attack against Reverseshell’s Internet address. After the promised attack materialized, Reverseshell responded, “Yall just hit military base contracted wifi.”

In a chat from October 2022, Reverseshell was bragging about the speed of the servers they were using, and in reply to another member’s question said that they were accessing the Internet via South Korea Telecom.

Telegram chat logs archived by Flashpoint show that on Aug. 23, 2022, Reverseshell bragged they’d been using automated tools to find valid logins for Internet servers that they resold to others.

“I’ve hit US gov servers with default creds,” Reverseshell wrote, referring to systems with easy-to-guess usernames and/or passwords. “Telecom control servers, machinery shops, Russian ISP servers, etc. I sold a few big companies for like $2-3k a piece. You can sell the access when you get a big SSH into corporation.”

On July 29, 2023, Reverseshell posted a screenshot of a login page for a major U.S. defense contractor, claiming they had an aerospace company’s credentials to sell.

PROMAN AND VARS_SECC

Flashpoint finds the Telegram ID 5408575119 has used several aliases since 2022, including Reverseshell and Proman557.

A search on the username Proman557 at the cyber intelligence platform Intel 471 shows that a hacker by the name “Proman554” registered on Hackforums in September 2022, and in messages to other users Proman554 said they can be reached at the Telegram account Buttholio.

Intel 471 also finds the Proman557 moniker is one of many used by a person on the Russian-language hacking forum Exploit in 2022 who sold a variety of Linux-based botnet malware.

Proman557 was eventually banned — allegedly for scamming a fellow member out of $350 — and the Exploit moderator warned forum users that Proman557 had previously registered under several other nicknames, including an account called “Vars_Secc.”

Vars_Secc’s thousands of comments on Telegram over two years show this user divided their time between online gaming, maintaining a DDoS botnet, and promoting the sale or renting of their botnets to other users.

“I use ddos for many things not just to be a skid,” Vars_Secc pronounced. “Why do you think I haven’t sold my net?” They then proceeded to list the most useful qualities of their botnet:

-I use it to hit off servers that ban me or piss me off
-I used to ddos certain games to get my items back since the data reverts to when u joined
-I use it for server side desync RCE vulnerabilities
-I use it to sometimes ransom
-I use it when bored as a source of entertainment

Flashpoint shows that in June 2023, Vars_Secc responded to taunting from a fellow member in the Telegram channel SecHub who had threatened to reveal their personal details to the federal government for a reward.

“Man I’ve been doing this shit for 4 years,” Vars_Secc replied nonchalantly. “I highly doubt the government is going to pay millions of dollars for data on some random dude operating a pointless ddos botnet and finding a few vulnerabilities here and there.”

For several months in 2023, Vars_Secc also was an active member of the Russian-language crime forum XSS, where they sold access to a U.S. government server for $2,000. However, Vars_Secc would be banned from XSS after attempting to sell access to the Russian telecommunications giant Rostelecom. [In this, Vars_Secc violated the Number One Rule for operating on a Russia-based crime forum: Never offer to hack or sell data stolen from Russian entities or citizens].

On June 20, 2023, Vars_Secc posted a sales thread on the cybercrime forum Ramp 2.0 titled, “Selling US Gov Financial Access.”

“Server within the network, possible to pivot,” Vars_Secc’s sparse sales post read. “Has 3-5 subroutes connected to it. Price $1,250. Telegram: Vars_Secc.”

Vars_Secc also used Ramp in June 2023 to sell access to a “Vietnam government Internet Network Information Center.”

“Selling access server allocated within the network,” Vars_Secc wrote. “Has some data on it. $500.”

BUG BOUNTIES

The Vars_Secc identity claimed on Telegram in May 2023 that they made money by submitting reports about software flaws to HackerOne, a company that helps technology firms field reports about security vulnerabilities in their products and services. Specifically, Vars_Secc said they had earned financial rewards or “bug bounties” from reddit.com, the U.S. Department of Defense, and Coinbase, among 30 others.

“I make money off bug bounties, it’s quite simple,” Vars_Secc said when asked what they do for a living. “That’s why I have over 30 bug bounty reports on HackerOne.”

A month before that, Vars_Secc said they’d found a vulnerability in reddit.com.

“I poisoned Reddit’s cache,” they explained. “I’m going to exploit it further, then report it to reddit.”

KrebsOnSecurity sought comment from HackerOne, which said it would investigate the claims. This story will be updated if they respond.

The Vars_Secc telegram handle also has claimed ownership of the BreachForums member “Boxfan,” and Intel 471 shows Boxfan’s early posts on the forum had the Vars_Secc Telegram account in their signature. In their most recent post to BreachForums in January 2024, Boxfan disclosed a security vulnerability they found in Naver, the most popular search engine in South Korea (according to statista.com). Boxfan’s comments suggest they have strong negative feelings about South Korean culture.

“Have fun exploiting this vulnerability,” Boxfan wrote on BreachForums, after pasting a long string of computer code intended to demonstrate the flaw. “Fuck you South Korea and your discriminatory views. Nobody likes ur shit kpop you evil fucks. Whoever can dump this DB [database] congrats. I don’t feel like doing it so I’ll post it to the forum.”

The many identities tied to Kiberphant0m strongly suggest they are or until recently were a U.S. Army soldier stationed in South Korea. Kiberphant0m’s alter egos never mentioned their military rank, regiment, or specialization.

However, it is likely that Kiberphant0m’s facility with computers and networking was noticed by the Army. According to the U.S. Army’s website, the bulk of its forces in South Korea reside within the Eighth Army, which has a dedicated cyber operations unit focused on defending against cyber threats.

On April 1, 2023, Vars_Secc posted to a public Telegram chat channel a screenshot of the National Security Agency’s website. The image indicated the visitor had just applied for some type of job at the NSA.

A screenshot posted by Vars_Secc on Telegram on April 1, 2023, suggesting they just applied for a job at the National Security Agency.

The NSA has not yet responded to requests for comment.

Reached via Telegram, Kiberphant0m acknowledged that KrebsOnSecurity managed to unearth their old handles.

“I see you found the IP behind it no way,” Kiberphant0m replied. “I see you managed to find my old aliases LOL.”

Kiberphant0m denied being in the U.S. Army or ever being in South Korea, and said all of that was a lengthy ruse designed to create a fictitious persona. “Epic opsec troll,” they claimed.

Asked if they were at all concerned about getting busted, Kiberphant0m called that an impossibility.

“I literally can’t get caught,” Kiberphant0m said, declining an invitation to explain why. “I don’t even live in the USA Mr. Krebs.”

Below is a mind map that hopefully helps illustrate some of the connections between and among Kiberphant0m’s apparent alter egos.

A mind map of the connections between and among the identities apparently used by Kiberphant0m. Click to enlarge.