Just heard from a fraud examiner that some asshat using my name and likeness is running around defrauding elderly people. The person who alerted me to this said the fraudsters are actually picking up these poor folks and driving them to credit union branches to withdraw cash. According to Constella Intelligence, the phone number listed here is tied a Facebook account for someone who appears to reside in the Chicago area. Exactly how stupid do you have to be to use my identity for something like this??

New, by me: Drones to Diplomas: How Russia's Largest Private University is Linked to a $25M Essay Mill A sprawling academic cheating network turbocharged by Google Ads that has generated nearly $25 million in revenue has curious connections to a Kremlin-connected oligarch whose Russian university builds drones for Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Drones to Diplomas: How Russia’s Largest Private University is Linked to a $25M Essay Mill – Krebs on Security

New, by me: SMS Phishers Pivot to Points, Taxes, Fake Retailers China-based phishing groups blamed for non-stop scam SMS messages about a supposed wayward package or unpaid toll fee are promoting a new offering, just in time for the holiday shopping season: Phishing kits for mass-creating fake but convincing e-commerce websites that convert customer payment card data into mobile wallets from Apple and Google. Experts say these same phishing groups also are now using SMS lures that promise unclaimed tax refunds and mobile rewards points.

SMS Phishers Pivot to Points, Taxes, Fake Retailers – Krebs on Security

I've got a Mastoduh question: If you hover over the follow button on someone's profile and see that it includes a "do not" circle that disallows following, does that mean they've blocked you, or that they have just turned off new followers? Or maybe something else? Thanks!

This story has it all: enshitification, magic and subcutaneous passwords. ""A magician in Missouri had a kooky idea: implant a computer chip into his hand and then do some fun magic tricks with it. Too bad he forgot the password." "Moving away from using the gadget as a magic prop, he later tinkered around with the chip by rewriting it with a Bitcoin address and then had it link to an image meme on Imgur, the online image-sharing platform. “But a few years ago that imgur link went down, and when I went to re-write the chip, I was horrified to realize I forgot the password that I had locked it with,” he said.'

Futurism

Man Loses Password to Chip Embedded Inside His Body

A magician in Missouri lost the password to an RFID microchip embedded in his hand and now he can't access the chip.

What fresh hell is this? https://otecosystem.com/teams/brian-krebs/ Definitely not something I sanctioned. They have other security people on here, too. Domain is 88 days old. Grr.

Scoopy, new, by me: Meet Rey, the Admin of 'Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters' "A prolific cybercriminal group that calls itself "Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters" made headlines regularly this year by stealing data from and publicly mass extorting dozens of major corporations. But the tables seem to have turned somewhat for "Rey," the moniker chosen by the technical operator and public face of the hacker group: Earlier this week, Rey confirmed his real life identity and agreed to an interview after KrebsOnSecurity tracked him down and contacted his father."

Meet Rey, the Admin of ‘Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters’ – Krebs on Security

Eat your heart out, Enron

Apparently there has been some kind of data breach of CodeRED, a high-speed telephone calling and texting system that is used to notify residents about emergency situations. This notice from Woodbury, Minn. states that the local sheriff's office has taken measures to transition its CodeRED emergency system following "a recent cyberattack and data breach that has impacted hundreds of agencies nationwide." "CodeRED has reported the impacted dataset may contain contact information of CodeRED users such as: name, address, email address, phone numbers, and/or associated passwords used to create user profiles for alerts. If the same password is used by system users for any other personal or business accounts, those passwords should be changed immediately."

CodeRED Emergency Notification System | Woodbury, MN

The City of Woodbury, in conjunction with Washington County, uses CodeRED, a high-speed telephone calling and texting system, to notify local resid...

I always wince a little when I see graphs and charts on the homepage of some news outlet, but this one was really well done and conveyed a lot of interesting and timely information in very few words. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/11/24/sp500-stock-market-tech-nvidia/