Adobe warned on Thursday that attackers are exploiting a previously unknown security hole in its Flash Player software to break into Microsoft Windows computers. Adobe said it plans to issue a fix for the flaw in the next few days, but now might be a good time to check your exposure to this still-ubiquitous program and harden your defenses.

Adobe said a critical vulnerability (CVE-2018-4878) exists in Adobe Flash Player 28.0.0.137 and earlier versions. Successful exploitation could allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

The software company warns that an exploit for the flaw is being used in the wild, and that so far the attacks leverage Microsoft Office documents with embedded malicious Flash content. Adobe said it plans to address this vulnerability in a release planned for the week of February 5.

According to Adobe’s advisory, beginning with Flash Player 27, administrators have the ability to change Flash Player’s behavior when running on Internet Explorer on Windows 7 and below by prompting the user before playing Flash content. A guide on how to do that is here (PDF). Administrators may also consider implementing Protected View for Office. Protected View opens a file marked as potentially unsafe in Read-only mode.

Hopefully, most readers here have taken my longstanding advice to disable or at least hobble Flash, a buggy and insecure component that nonetheless ships by default with Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. More on that approach (as well as slightly less radical solutions) can be found in A Month Without Adobe Flash Player. The short version is that you can probably get by without Flash installed and not miss it at all.

For readers still unwilling to cut the Flash cord, there are half-measures that work almost as well. Fortunately, disabling Flash in Chrome is simple enough. Paste “chrome://settings/content” into a Chrome browser bar and then select “Flash” from the list of items. By default it should be set to “Ask first” before running Flash, although users also can disable Flash entirely here or whitelist and blacklist specific sites.

By default, Mozilla Firefox on Windows computers with Flash installed runs Flash in a “protected mode,” which prompts the user to decide if they want to enable the plugin before Flash content runs on a Web site.

Another, perhaps less elegant, alternative to wholesale kicking Flash to the curb is to keeping it installed in a browser that you don’t normally use, and then only using that browser on sites that require Flash.

On Jan. 27, 2018, KrebsOnSecurity published what this author thought a scoop about the first known incidence of U.S. ATMs being hit with “jackpotting” attacks, a crime in which thieves deploy malware that forces cash machines to spit out money like a loose Las Vegas slot machine. As it happens, the first known jackpotting attacks in the United States were reported in November 2017 by local media on the west coast, although the reporters in those cases seem to have completely buried the lede.

On Nov. 20, 2017, Oil City News — a community publication in Wyoming — reported on the arrest of three Venezuelan nationals who were busted on charges of marijuana possession after being stopped by police.

After pulling over the van the men were driving, police on the scene reportedly detected the unmistakable aroma of pot smoke wafting from the vehicle. When the cops searched the van, they discovered small amounts of pot, THC edible gummy candies, and several backpacks full of cash.

FBI agents had already been looking for the men, who were allegedly caught on surveillance footage tinkering with cash machines in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, shortly before those ATMs were relieved of tens of thousands of dollars.

According to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, the men first hit an ATM at a credit union in Parker, Colo. on October 10, 2017. The robbery occurred after business hours, but the cash machine in question was located in a vestibule available to customers 24/7.

The complaint says surveillance videos showed the men opening the top of the ATM, which housed the computer and hard drive for the ATM — but not the secured vault where the cash was stored. The video showed the subjects reaching into the ATM, and then closing it and exiting the vestibule. On the video, one of the subjects appears to be carrying an object consistent with the size and appearance of the hard drive from the ATM.

Approximately ten minutes later, the subjects returned and opened up the cash machine again. Then they closed the top of the ATM and appeared to wait while the ATM computer restarted. After that, both subjects could be seen on the video using their mobile phones. One of the subjects reportedly appeared to be holding a small wireless mini-computer keyboard.

Soon after, the ATM began spitting out cash, netting the thieves more than $24,000. When they they were done, the suspects allegedly retrieved their equipment from the ATM and left.

Forensic analysis of the ATM hard drive determined that the thieves installed the Ploutus.D malware on the cash machine’s hard drive. Ploutus.D is an advanced malware strain that lets crooks interact directly with the ATM’s computer and force it to dispense money.

“Often the malware requires entering of codes to dispense cash,” reads an FBI affidavit (PDF). “These codes can be obtained by a third party, not at the location, who then provides the codes to the subjects at the ATM. This allows the third party to know how much cash is dispensed from the ATM, preventing those who are physically at the ATM from keeping cash for themselves instead of providing it to the criminal organization. The use of mobile phones is often used to obtain these dispensing codes.”

In November 2017, similar ATM jackpotting attacks were discovered in the Saint George, Utah area. Surveillance footage from those ATMs showed the same subjects were at work.

The FBI’s investigation determined that the vehicles used by the suspects in the Utah thefts were rented by Venezuelan nationals.

On Nov. 16, Isaac Rafael Jorge Romero, 29, Jose Alejandro Osorio Echegaray, 36, and two other Venezuelan nationals were arrested Teton County, Wyo. on drug charges. Two other suspects in the Utah theft were arrested in San Diego when they tried to return a rental car that was caught on surveillance camera at one of the hacked ATMs.

To carry out a jackpotting attack, thieves first must gain physical access to the cash machine. From there they can use malware or specialized electronics — often a combination of both — to control the operations of the ATM.

All of the known ATM jackpotting attacks in the U.S. so far appear to be targeting a handful of older model cash machines manufactured by ATM giant Diebold Nixdorf. However, security firm FireEye notes that — with minor modifications to the malware code — Plotus.D could be used to target software that runs on 40 different ATM vendors in 80 countries.

Diebold’s advisory on hardening ATMs against jackpotting attacks is available here (PDF).

Jackpotting is not a new crime: Indeed, it has been a problem for ATM operators in most of the world for many years now. But for some reason, jackpotting attacks have until recently eluded U.S. ATM operators.

Jackpotting has been a real threat to ATM owners and manufacturers since at least 2010, when the late security researcher Barnaby Michael Douglas Jack (known to most as simply “Barnaby Jack”) demonstrated the attack to a cheering audience at the Black Hat security conference. A recording of that presentation is below.

Today, Jan. 29, is officially the first day of the 2018 tax-filing season, also known as the day fraudsters start requesting phony tax refunds in the names of identity theft victims. Want to minimize the chances of getting hit by tax refund fraud this year? File your taxes before the bad guys can!

Tax refund fraud affects hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of U.S. citizens annually. Victims usually first learn of the crime after having their returns rejected because scammers beat them to it. Even those who are not required to file a return can be victims of refund fraud, as can those who are not actually due a refund from the IRS.

According to the IRS, consumer complaints over tax refund fraud have been declining steadily over the years as the IRS and states enact more stringent measures for screening potentially fraudulent applications.

If you file your taxes electronically and the return is rejected, and if you were the victim of identity theft (e.g., if your Social Security number and other information was leaked in the Equifax breach last year), you should submit an Identity Theft Affidavit (Form 14039). The IRS advises that if you suspect you are a victim of identity theft, continue to pay your taxes and file your tax return, even if you must do so by paper.

If the IRS believes you were likely the victim of tax refund fraud in the previous tax year they will likely send you a special filing PIN that needs to be entered along with this year’s return before the filing will be accepted by the IRS electronically. This year marks the third out of the last five that I’ve received one of these PINs from the IRS.

Of course, filing your taxes early to beat the fraudsters requires one to have all of the tax forms needed to do so. As a sole proprietor, this is a great challenge because many companies take their sweet time sending out 1099 forms and such (even though they’re required to do so by Jan. 31).

A great many companies are now turning to online services to deliver tax forms to contractors, employees and others. For example, I have received several notices via email regarding the availability of 1099 forms online; most say they are sending the forms in snail mail, but that if I need them sooner I can get them online if I just create an account or enter some personal information at some third-party site.

Having seen how so many of these sites handle personal information, I’m not terribly interested in volunteering more of it. According to Bankrate, taxpayers can still file their returns even if they don’t yet have all of their 1099s — as long as you have the correct information about how much you earned.

“Unlike a W-2, you generally don’t have to attach 1099s to your tax return,” Bankrate explains. “They are just issued so you’ll know how much to report, with copies going to the IRS so return processors can double-check your entries. As long as you have the correct information, you can put it on your tax form without having the statement in hand.”

In past tax years, identity thieves have used data gleaned from a variety of third-party and government Web sites to file phony tax refund requests — including from the IRS itself! One of their perennial favorites was the IRS’s Get Transcript service, which previously had fairly lax authentication measures.

After hundreds of thousands of taxpayers had their tax data accessed through the online tool, the IRS took it offline for a bit and then brought it back online but requiring a host of new data elements.

But many of those elements — such as your personal account number from a credit card, mortgage, home equity loan, home equity line of credit or car loan — can be gathered from multiple locations online with almost no authentication. For example, earlier this week I heard from Jason, a longtime reader who was shocked at how little information was required to get a copy of his 2017 mortgage interest statement from his former lender.

“I called our old mortgage company (Chase) to retrieve our 1098 from an old loan today,” Jason wrote. “After I provided the last four digits of the social security # to their IVR [interactive voice response system] that was enough to validate me to request a fax of the tax form, which would have included sensitive information. I asked for a supervisor who explained to me that it was sufficient to check the SSN last 4 + the caller id phone number to validate the account.”

If you’ve taken my advice and placed a security freeze on your credit file with the major credit bureaus, you don’t have to worry about thieves somehow bypassing the security on the IRS’s Get Transcript site. That’s because the IRS uses Experian to ask a series of knowledge-based authentication questions before an online account can even be created at the IRS’s site to access the transcript.

Now, anyone who reads this site regularly should know I’ve been highly critical of these KBA questions as a means of authentication. But the upshot here is that if you have a freeze in place at Experian (and I sincerely hope you do), Experian won’t even be able to ask those questions. Thus, thieves should not be able to create an account in your name at the IRS’s site (unless of course thieves manage to successfully request your freeze PIN from Experian’s site, in which case all bets are off).

While you’re getting your taxes in order this filing season, be on guard against fake emails or Web sites that may try to phish your personal or tax data. The IRS stresses that it will never initiate contact with taxpayers about a bill or refund. If you receive a phishing email that spoofs the IRS, consider forwarding it to phishing@irs.gov.

Finally, tax season also is when the phone-based tax scams kick into high gear, with fraudsters threatening taxpayers with arrest, deportation and other penalties if they don’t make an immediate payment over the phone. If you care for older parents or relatives, this may be a good time to remind them about these and other phone-based scams.

ATM “jackpotting” — a sophisticated crime in which thieves install malicious software and/or hardware at ATMs that forces the machines to spit out huge volumes of cash on demand — has long been a threat for banks in Europe and Asia, yet these attacks somehow have eluded U.S. ATM operators. But all that changed this week after the U.S. Secret Service quietly began warning financial institutions that jackpotting attacks have now been spotted targeting cash machines here in the United States.

To carry out a jackpotting attack, thieves first must gain physical access to the cash machine. From there they can use malware or specialized electronics — often a combination of both — to control the operations of the ATM.

On Jan. 21, 2018, KrebsOnSecurity began hearing rumblings about jackpotting attacks, also known as “logical attacks,” hitting U.S. ATM operators. I quickly reached out to ATM giant NCR Corp. to see if they’d heard anything. NCR said at the time it had received unconfirmed reports, but nothing solid yet.

On Jan. 26, NCR sent an advisory to its customers saying it had received reports from the Secret Service and other sources about jackpotting attacks against ATMs in the United States.

“While at present these appear focused on non-NCR ATMs, logical attacks are an industry-wide issue,” the NCR alert reads. “This represents the first confirmed cases of losses due to logical attacks in the US. This should be treated as a call to action to take appropriate steps to protect their ATMs against these forms of attack and mitigate any consequences.”

The NCR memo does not mention the type of jackpotting malware used against U.S. ATMs. But a source close to the matter said the Secret Service is warning that organized criminal gangs have been attacking stand-alone ATMs in the United States using “Ploutus.D,” an advanced strain of jackpotting malware first spotted in 2013.

According to that source — who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on the record — the Secret Service has received credible information that crooks are activating so-called “cash out crews” to attack front-loading ATMs manufactured by ATM vendor Diebold Nixdorf.

The source said the Secret Service is warning that thieves appear to be targeting Opteva 500 and 700 series Dielbold ATMs using the Ploutus.D malware in a series of coordinated attacks over the past 10 days, and that there is evidence that further attacks are being planned across the country.

“The targeted stand-alone ATMs are routinely located in pharmacies, big box retailers, and drive-thru ATMs,” reads a confidential Secret Service alert sent to multiple financial institutions and obtained by KrebsOnSecurity. “During previous attacks, fraudsters dressed as ATM technicians and attached a laptop computer with a mirror image of the ATMs operating system along with a mobile device to the targeted ATM.”

Reached for comment, Diebold shared an alert it sent to customers Friday warning of potential jackpotting attacks in the United States. Diebold’s alert confirms the attacks so far appear to be targeting front-loaded Opteva cash machines.

“As in Mexico last year, the attack mode involves a series of different steps to overcome security mechanism and the authorization process for setting the communication with the [cash] dispenser,” the Diebold security alert reads. A copy of the entire Diebold alert, complete with advice on how to mitigate these attacks, is available here (PDF).

The Secret Service alert explains that the attackers typically use an endoscope — a slender, flexible instrument traditionally used in medicine to give physicians a look inside the human body — to locate the internal portion of the cash machine where they can attach a cord that allows them to sync their laptop with the ATM’s computer.

“Once this is complete, the ATM is controlled by the fraudsters and the ATM will appear Out of Service to potential customers,” reads the confidential Secret Service alert.

At this point, the crook(s) installing the malware will contact co-conspirators who can remotely control the ATMs and force the machines to dispense cash.

“In previous Ploutus.D attacks, the ATM continuously dispensed at a rate of 40 bills every 23 seconds,” the alert continues. Once the dispense cycle starts, the only way to stop it is to press cancel on the keypad. Otherwise, the machine is completely emptied of cash, according to the alert.

An 2017 analysis of Ploutus.D by security firm FireEye called it “one of the most advanced ATM malware families we’ve seen in the last few years.”

“Discovered for the first time in Mexico back in 2013, Ploutus enabled criminals to empty ATMs using either an external keyboard attached to the machine or via SMS message, a technique that had never been seen before,” FireEye’s Daniel Regalado wrote.

According to FireEye, the Ploutus attacks seen so far require thieves to somehow gain physical access to an ATM — either by picking its locks, using a stolen master key or otherwise removing or destroying part of the machine.

Regalado says the crime gangs typically responsible for these attacks deploy “money mules” to conduct the attacks and siphon cash from ATMs. The term refers to low-level operators within a criminal organization who are assigned high-risk jobs, such as installing ATM skimmers and otherwise physically tampering with cash machines.

“From there, the attackers can attach a physical keyboard to connect to the machine, and [use] an activation code provided by the boss in charge of the operation in order to dispense money from the ATM,” he wrote. “Once deployed to an ATM, Ploutus makes it possible for criminals to obtain thousands of dollars in minutes. While there are some risks of the money mule being caught by cameras, the speed in which the operation is carried out minimizes the mule’s risk.”

Indeed, the Secret Service memo shared by my source says the cash out crew/money mules typically take the dispensed cash and place it in a large bag. After the cash is taken from the ATM and the mule leaves, the phony technician(s) return to the site and remove their equipment from the compromised ATM.

“The last thing the fraudsters do before leaving the site is to plug the Ethernet cable back in,” the alert notes.

FireEye said all of the samples of Ploutus.D it examined targeted Diebold ATMs, but it warned that small changes to the malware’s code could enable it to be used against 40 different ATM vendors in 80 countries.

The Secret Service alert says ATMs still running on Windows XP are particularly vulnerable, and it urged ATM operators to update to a version of Windows 7 to defeat this specific type of attack.

This is a quickly developing story and may be updated multiple times over the next few days as more information becomes available.

KrebsOnSecurity has long warned readers to plant your own flag at the my Social Security online portal of the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) — even if you are not yet drawing benefits from the agency — because identity thieves have been registering accounts in peoples’ names and siphoning retirement and/or disability funds. This is the story of a Midwest couple that took all the right precautions and still got hit by ID thieves who impersonated them to the SSA directly over the phone.

In mid-December 2017 this author heard from Ed Eckenstein, a longtime reader in Oklahoma whose wife Ruth had just received a snail mail letter from the SSA about successfully applying to withdraw benefits. The letter confirmed she’d requested a one-time transfer of more than $11,000 from her SSA account. The couple said they were perplexed because both previously had taken my advice and registered accounts with MySocialSecurity, even though Ruth had not yet chosen to start receiving SSA benefits.

Sure enough, when Ruth logged into her MySocialSecurity account online, there was a pending $11,665 withdrawal destined to be deposited into a Green Dot prepaid debit card account (funds deposited onto a Green Dot card can be spent like cash at any store that accepts credit or debit cards). The $11,655 amount was available for a one-time transfer because it was intended to retroactively cover monthly retirement payments back to her 65th birthday.

The letter the Eckensteins received from the SSA indicated that the benefits had been requested over the phone, meaning the crook(s) had called the SSA pretending to be Ruth and supplied them with enough information about her to enroll her to begin receiving benefits. Ed said he and his wife immediately called the SSA to notify them of fraudulent enrollment and pending withdrawal, and they were instructed to appear in person at an SSA office in Oklahoma City.

The SSA ultimately put a hold on the fraudulent $11,665 transfer, but Ed said it took more than four hours at the SSA office to sort it all out. Mr. Eckenstein said the agency also informed them that the thieves had signed his wife up for disability payments. In addition, her profile at the SSA had been changed to include a phone number in the 786 area code (Miami, Fla.).

“They didn’t change the physical address perhaps thinking that would trigger a letter to be sent to us,” Ed explained.

Thankfully, the SSA sent a letter anyway. Ed said many additional hours spent researching the matter with SSA personnel revealed that in order to open the claim on Ruth’s retirement benefits, the thieves had to supply the SSA with a short list of static identifiers about her, including her birthday, place of birth, mother’s maiden name, current address and phone number.

Unfortunately, most (if not all) of this data is available on a broad swath of the American populace for free online (think Zillow, Ancestry.com, Facebook, etc.) or else for sale in the cybercrime underground for about the cost of a latte at Starbucks.

The Eckensteins thought the matter had been resolved until Jan. 14, when Ruth received a 1099 form from the SSA indicating they’d reported to the IRS that she had in fact received an $11,665 payment.

“We’ve emailed our tax guy for guidance on how to deal with this on our taxes,” Mr. Eckenstein wrote in an email to KrebsOnSecurity. “My wife logged into SSA portal and there was a note indicating that corrected/updated 1099s would be available at the end of the month. She’s not sure whether that message was specific to her or whether everyone’s seeing that.”

NOT SMALL IF IT HAPPENS TO YOU

Identity thieves have been exploiting authentication weaknesses to divert retirement account funds almost since the SSA launched its portal eight years ago. But the crime really picked up in 2013, around the same time KrebsOnSecurity first began warning readers to register their own accounts at the MySSA portal. That uptick coincided with a move by the U.S. Treasury to start requiring that all beneficiaries receive payments through direct deposit (though the SSA says paper checks are still available to some beneficiaries under limited circumstances).

More than 34 million Americans now conduct business with the Social Security Administration (SSA) online. A story this week from Reuters says the SSA doesn’t track data on the prevalence of identity theft. Nevertheless, the agency assured the news outlet that its anti-fraud efforts have made the problem “very rare.”

But Reuters notes that a 2015 investigation by the SSA’s Office of Inspector General investigation identified more than 30,000 suspicious MySSA registrations, and more than 58,000 allegations of fraud related to MySSA accounts from February 2013 to February 2016.

“Those figures are small in the context of overall MySSA activity – but it will not seem small if it happens to you,” writes Mark Miller for Reuters.

The SSA has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Ed and Ruth’s experience notwithstanding, it’s still a good idea to set up a MySSA account — particularly if you or your spouse will be eligible to withdraw benefits soon. The agency has been trying to beef up online authentication for citizens logging into its MySSA portal. Last summer the SSA began requiring all users to enter a username and password in addition to a one-time security code sent their email or phone, although as previously reported here that authentication process could be far more robust.

The Reuters story reminds readers to periodically use the MySSA portal to check and make sure that your personal information – such as date of birth and mailing address – are correct. “For current beneficiaries, if you notice that a monthly payment has not arrived, you should notify the SSA immediately via the agency’s toll-free line (1-800-772-1213) or at your local field office,” Miller advised. “In most cases, the SSA will make you whole if the theft is reported quickly.”

Another option is to use the SSA’s “Block Electronic Access” feature, which blocks any automatic telephone or online access to your Social Security record – including by you (although it’s unclear if blocking access this way would have stopped ID thieves who manage to speak with a live SSA representative). To restore electronic access, you’ll need to contact the Social Security Administration and provide proof of your identity.