An international law enforcement operation has dismantled an online phone number spoofing service called iSpoof.

An international law enforcement operation that was conducted by authorities in Europe, Australia, the United States, Ukraine, and Canada, with the support of Europol, has dismantled online phone number spoofing service called iSpoof. The iSpoof service allowed fraudsters to impersonate trusted corporations or contacts in an attempt to gain access to sensitive information from victims.

Threat actors used the service to trick victims into disclosing financial or private information or transferring money.  

“The services of the website allowed those who sign up and pay for the service to anonymously make spoofed calls, send recorded messages, and intercept one-time passwords.” reads the announcement published by Europol. “The users were able to impersonate an infinite number of entities (such as banks, retail companies and government institutions) for financial gain and substantial losses to victims.”

The ‘spoofing’ service is believed to have caused an estimated worldwide loss in excess of GBP 100 million (EUR 115 million).

“According to the police, some victims have seen their savings or pension pot disappear within hours.” reported the Dutch Police.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Elaborate, was launched in October 2021 at the request of the UK authorities. The iSpoof was launched in December 2020 and authorities estimated it had 59,000 users.

“The exploitation of technology by organised criminals is one of the greatest challenges for law enforcement in the 21st century. Together with the support of partners across UK policing and internationally, we are reinventing the way fraud is investigated. The Met is targeting the criminals at the centre of these illicit webs that cause misery to thousands.” London’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley stated. “By taking away the tools and systems that have enabled fraudsters to cheat innocent people at scale, this operation shows how we are determined to target corrupt individuals intent on exploiting often vulnerable people.”

In the coordinated effort led by the United Kingdom, 142 suspects have been arrested, including the administrator of the iSpoof website (ispoof[.]me and ispoof[.]cc).

The police seized the servers behind the service and two days later Ukrainian and U.S. agencies took them offline.

“The arrests today send a message to cybercriminals that they can no longer hide behind perceived international anonymity. Europol coordinated the law enforcement community, enriched the information picture and brought criminal intelligence into ongoing operations to target the criminals wherever they are located.” Europol’s Executive Director Ms Catherine De Bolle said. “Together with our international partners, we will continue to relentlessly push the envelope to bring criminals to justice.”

“As cybercrime knows no borders, effective judicial cooperation across jurisdictions is key in bringing its perpetrators to court. Eurojust supports national authorities in their efforts to protect citizens against online and offline threats, and to help see that justice gets done.” Eurojust President Mr Ladislav Hamran said.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, iSpoof)

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The days of early morning Black Friday shopping are behind most consumers, but for Lex Uribe in Las Vegas the biggest shopping holiday of the year is a family bonding event.

After weeks of passing up early Black Friday deals from Walmart, Target and Amazon, Uribe is on the hunt for a Nintendo Switch and video games for her daughter, Tupperware for her kitchen and a vacuum cleaner.

Checking off items from the holiday list is “just cheaper” on Black Friday, plus, “it’s our favorite day of the year, so we just wait,” Uribe said.

Uribe joins millions of shoppers who waited for what they hope might be the deepest discounts of the holiday season on Black Friday, despite an industry-wide push by retailers to get shoppers to buy holiday items starting in October.

An estimated 166.3 million people are planning to shop from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday this year, according to the National Retail Federation.

This figure is almost 8 million more people than last year.

The waiting game by shoppers has forced retailers to offer steep discounts on items, which may pinch profit margins in the fourth quarter.

Target (TGT.N), Macy’s (M.N) and Best Buy (BBY.N) have also warned that they will need to discount more this November and December than in the previous two years as shoppers delay making purchases.

Walmart has ramped up marketing for the holiday, purchasing ad space on Twitter and Instagram, during National Football League games and on billboards near New York City’s Penn Station with the hopes of getting customers to shop early and frequently ahead of Black Friday.

Americans, especially from low-income households, are expected to pull back on their holiday shopping this year as inflation and higher energy prices pinch their spending power.

A survey of nearly 1,700 U.S. consumers by S&P Global Market Intelligence shows that 26% of respondents are looking to spend less this holiday season, 66% say they will spend roughly the same amount as last year. Only 7% say they will spend more.

Iran’s national soccer team sang during the playing of their national anthem at their second World Cup match against Wales on Friday, despite not singing in their opening game earlier this week in apparent support of protesters back home.

Loud jeers were heard from Iranian supporters as the anthem played, with the team singing quietly as it played. Iranian authorities have responded with deadly force to suppress protests that have marked one of the boldest challenges to its clerical rulers since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly announced new aid for Ukraine on a visit to Kyiv on Friday, including ambulances and support for victims of sexual violence by Russian soldiers.

After meeting President Volodymyr Zelensky, Cleverly tweeted: “President @ZelenskyyUa, the UK is supporting you with action — not just words.

“I made you that promise today. The UK intends to keep it,” he said, after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak used a visit last weekend to the Ukrainian capital to set out a new package of military aid worth £50 million ($60 million).

The package announced by Cleverly includes 24 ambulances and six armoured vehicles, according to the foreign office.

He unveiled a further £3 million towards rebuilding infrastructure such as schools and shelters, and extra funding to support “survivors of the sexual violence carried out by the Russian military”, the ministry added.

“As winter sets in, Russia is continuing to try and break Ukrainian resolve through its brutal attacks on civilians, hospitals and energy infrastructure,” Cleverly said.

“Russia will fail,” he said, vowing UK support “will continue for as long as it takes”.

The UK government said it was also committing £5 million to a Ukraine-led initiative, delivered through the UN World Food Programme, to ship grain to countries most at risk of famine, including Sudan and Yemen.

“Global food security is in all our interests,” Environment Secretary Therese Coffey said.

“And helping Ukraine’s farmers and agricultural sector to continue producing and exporting food in these most difficult of circumstances is vital for that security,” she said.

On his visit, Sunak promised 125 anti-aircraft guns and equipment to help Ukraine counter Iranian-supplied drones, along with cold-weather winter kit to its armed forces.

On Wednesday, Britain’s defence ministry said it was sending helicopters to Ukraine for the first time since Russia’s invasion — three Sea Kings, along with an additional 10,000 artillery rounds.

The post UK Foreign Minister Brings New Aid to Kyiv appeared first on Kyiv Post.

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The post Russians shelling Kherson city, Bilozerka and Beryslav communities day and night appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

Lada Koslovska, like most Kherson residents, was thrilled when Ukrainian troops liberated the city. But the situation in the city is still grim, and now she and her child are leaving.

Koslovska, 47, said Russian shelling of the city with a pre-war population of 280,000, from the other side of the Dnipro River, is the main reason she and her son will close up their home and become refugees.

“Psychologically we were ready. It seemed that we could survive, but it is very scary. What the Russians cannot keep, they will try to destroy. This is one of the reasons,” said in responses to text questions sent Koslovska by Kyiv Post.

Russian troops captured by Russian Federation (RF) forces on Mar. 2 with minimal fighting, and abandoned it on Nov 11 without a shot. Ukrainian reconnaissance troops entered the city the next day, and within a week Russian artillery across the river was hammering Kherson homes and business, as local authorities have struggled to deliver food, electricity and heat.

At most locations in the city, there is “no electricity, no water (and) almost no telephone connection,” said volunteer Oleska Kotoslawksy, in a text message from Kherson to Kyiv Post.

Some strikes were with banned cluster munitions, said Oleksandr Leshchenko, a Kherson city spokesman, in statement. Kherson’s Dnipro River shore, still an important source of water for residents still without working faucets in their homes, is unsafe to approach, because of Russian forces able to fire from the other side of the river, a Kherson city police warning said.

Bombardment of Kherson’s riverside and inland suburbs has, news reports said, intensified in recent weeks.

On 24 Nov. a salvo of missiles or artillery rockets hit an apartment in Kherson’s Tavrisky district, blowing three-meter wide holes in an apartment building. Seven people were killed and at least 21 were injured, a Friday statement from the regional defense command said. From 20 to 24 Nov. Russian shells or rockets struck 45 times in or around Kherson city, said Halyna Luhova, Kherson regional administration spokeswoman, in a statement.

“They (Russian artillery) can reach anywhere: in the suburbs and areas closer to the river. From mortars, MLRS, and tanks,” Koslovska said. “People say Russians set up a mortar close to the river and fire and then run. They are hiding in Oleshky and Gola Prystan (on the left bank of the Dnipro River) inside the residential districts.”

Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, in Wednesday television comments said the Kremlin is likely to target cities like Kherson in future even more, because the Russian army is running out of long-range, precision-guided cruise missiles, but still has thousands of S-300 missiles – a weapon normally used to shoot at airplanes, but able to hit a ground target at medium ranges of 180-360 km. Kherson is in that range envelope and will almost certainly be hit again and again, he predicted.

“We see that they (the Russian army) do not particularly strive for accuracy. In many cases, a miss of a kilometer is normal and sufficient (accuracy) to hit…civilian houses and hospitals,” Yusov said.

“When we were under occupation, we adapted, we were partisans, but we knew for sure when the explosions happened, it was ours, and we were not afraid…(T)he Ukrainian army is very accurate, and when our army was firing at Russians (in Kherson) even the windows in the houses nearby were intact. But now – it is a matter of luck,” Koslovksa said.

Even without Russian bombardment, much of Kherson’s power grid, communications, logistics chains and civilian infrastructure are increasingly under pressure, as winter approaches and local authorities have struggled to deliver sufficient food and electricity for families like to survive.

According to news reports, only a few bank terminals operate in the entire city, phone communications are generally limited to text and voice, and the closest reliable fuel stations are outside Kherson on the Mykolaiv highway.

Transformer stations and power line rights-of-way for the Kherson, now at times under fire by Russian missiles fired from across the Dnipro River, were thickly mined by departing Russian troops, said

Volodymyr Kudriatsky, a spokesman for the state energy company Ukrenergo, according to an UNIAN news agency report. The mines and booby traps are so dense at some locations, he said, that demining a square meter of power grid territory can last an hour.

Generators, batteries and flashlights are at a premium, and buying one is often impossible, journalist Konstantyn Ryzhenko wrote in his Telegram channel.

Regional authorities were handing out packaged supplies to residents across the city, said Yaroslav Yanushevych, a Kherson city spokesman. Volunteer groups, some from afar, were moving to fill gaps. Ihor Kukobko, head of the NGO Iskra Dobra, said his group started delivering assistance to Kherson residents three days after the Russians left. The biggest demand at present, he said, is long-storage foods like potatoes and cabbages, candles and batteries, and wood-fired stoves.

Yaroslav Yanushevych, head of the Kherson regional administration, in comments to the state-run Suspinske information platform said the national government has designated Kherson a front-line city and will transport citizens wanting to evacuate at government cost, by bus or by train.

Koslovska‘s plan is to get out of the city, move in with her son, and help out people worse off than herself.

“I plan to see the older son and take the younger child to a safer place. Because Kherson is a front-line city. If there were only problems with electricity and water, it wouldn’t be so scary, but shelling knocks me off track,” she said. “I want the child to spend a little while in a safer place. And secondly – as soon as I get to a place where I can participate, I will find a volunteer center.”

The post Kherson resident flees liberated home: “Now the Russians are shelling us” appeared first on Kyiv Post.