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For the month of April 2018, Irdeto discovered 854 listings of OTT credentials from 69 unique sellers across more than 15 dark web marketplaces. The purloined usernames and passwords on sale were from 42 different streaming services including Netflix, HBO, DirecTV and Hulu.
According to Irdeto, the stolen account info it discovered was available for an average one-time price of $8.81, while some dark-web sellers also offered bundles of credentials for several services at higher prices.
On dark web marketplaces, which are cloaked using secret access protocols, a wide range of illicit products, accounts and services are available for purchase, including account credentials for a range of pay-TV services.
The vendor also found that illegal live-streaming piracy is a global problem, with an average of 74 million global visits per month to the top 10 live-streaming sites in Q1 2018. Most traffic came from the U.S. (2.93 million average monthly visits), the U.K. (1.71 million) and Germany (1,52 million). The company cited a report about a British man who received an 85,000 ($108,500) bill from Sky after a friend illegally streamed a championship boxing match on Facebook Live using his subscription.
Unsuspecting Netflix customers who are tricked into this process will not only divulge their account password (which they may have used elsewhere), but may also have their credit card details stolen and used for fraudulent purchases.
If you do receive a Netflix phishing email, you should report it officially to Netflix by forwarding the message to phis...@netflix.com. Further information about keeping your Netflix account secure can be found here.
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At just after 2 a.m. on Tuesday, someone -- I like to imagine a young man -- left a house in a quiet residential area of Brisbane, Australia and got into an Uber car, traveling 9 miles before being dropped off at another house.
When I finally looked at my phone a half-hour after this ride took place, it took me a minute to figure out why I was getting so many notifications from Uber, since I have never actually used the service. (I do use Uber Eats.)
This all-too-common problem has escalated in the last two years as Uber and Netflix passwords have become more valuable on the black market than credit cards, which have stronger identity theft protections.
I contacted Uber right away through the app, which was familiar enough with this problem to send me to "What to do if your account has been compromised" page. Uber suggests changing your password (which I did). I also sent them a message telling them I had been erroneously charged and within 24 hours I was reimbursed for the Australian joyride.
But I was still confused as to what actually happened. Did someone hack into Uber's customer database? Were all my passwords listed in some dark corner of the Internet? Was my credit card information also at risk?
In a conference call from London, Adam Tyler, the chief innovation officer for CSID, said my password was likely stolen from another third-party site, and not from Uber. Once the thief figured out my name, email and password for one site, he or she was able to try it with other services, like Uber, Tyler explained.
Without needing any particular technical expertise, Tyler was able to punch in the name of a website and pull up a list of stolen credit cards and account information for sale. It functioned much like a black market eBay, with a section just for stolen credit cards and even customer reviews.
He showed me how doing a simple search on this site for "Uber" quickly pulls up ads for stolen Uber passwords. One was selling for $1.50. He said it's gotten so easy to find, buy and use stolen passwords that a child could do it.
It was clear that I had made two fatal flaws when protecting my own identity. The first was that I was using the same passwords over and over on multiple accounts. But I had also missed warning signs.
But I had not gotten around to changing my password. Since the person using my HBO Now wasn't doing any financial damage, it didn't strike me as urgent. I asked Tyler if the HBO Now breach and the Uber one were possibly related, since I had used the same password for both.
But what responsibility do companies like Uber or HBO bear on this, I asked him. Shouldn't Uber have noticed, using data analytics, that someone based in Austin was likely not taking her first Uber ride in Australia? Or shouldn't HBO care that my account was seeing unusually high levels of usage and notify me?
Tyler said it would be costly for Uber to institute stricter security controls, and that ultimately the responsibility fell on me to do a better job of changing my passwords. "We're going to have big problems if Uber tried to start restricting or logging out users," Tyler said. "They would go to Lyft or somewhere else."
1. Don't use the same password for every online account. In an ideal world, every account should have a separate password. That means your email password should be different from the one you use to check your airline rewards points.
3. Protect the devices your passwords are on. If you mainly use your phone or tablet to access your various online accounts, you might want to look into anti-virus apps for your phone. "We've seen a huge explosion in Android malware," Tyler said. "We have to be careful about the devices we use and how we use them."
Netflix spearheaded the streaming movement and changed at-home entertainment as we know it. For this reason, it remains one of the giants of the industry today. Scammers often impersonate well-known, trustworthy companies, making a household name like Netflix a prime target. With scam texts holding their spot atop the list of phone-scam threats, Netflix text scams were all but inevitable.
Phone scammers steal billions of dollars from Americans every year, leaving them with drained bank accounts and lingering psychological effects. However, there are ways to protect oneself and fight back. Keep reading to learn about Netflix text scams and how to avoid falling for fake messages.
Netflix text scams are a specific type of smishing attack (which is a type of phishing scam) whereby fraudsters try to get valuable personal information from their targets by disguising themselves as Netflix. They hunt for sensitive data like credit card numbers, email addresses, and login credentials they might use to hack into other accounts. Some scammers go directly for your money, while others sell your stolen data on the dark web.
One type of Netflix text scam claims your account has been put on hold, possibly due to declined payments or suspicious account activity. The text contains a link and instructs you to follow it to input your credentials, update your information, and regain access to the streaming service. Unfortunately, the link actually sends you to a fake website where scammers can steal your information. Alternatively, it may download malware onto your device.
Scammers like to center scams around problems with payment or billing information because it allows them to target your most sensitive data right away. Some Netflix text scams claim you must update your payment details because your card expired or was declined. As usual, they send a link that allegedly allows you to update your financial information and reactivate your account, but your financial details go right to the scammer.
Many different types of scams involve the same kinds of tactics, which means they feature some of the same red flags. Some warning signs are easy to spot, while others are a bit more subtle. The quicker you recognize the signs, the quicker you can shut down the scammer.
Although Netflix may not be able to reimburse you after a scam text, telling them about your experience may allow them to protect others from going through it themselves. You can forward Netflix scam text messages to phis...@netflix.com.
You can also report scam texts to the authorities to help them combat scammers and build their global databases. Getting your money back after being scammed can be difficult, but quickly alerting the authorities and giving them all of the information you can may improve your chances of catching the criminal.
Netflix text scams are just one iteration of the multi-billion-dollar text scam problem, but there are ways to protect yourself and take back your privacy. With the right spam-blocking app, you can fend off phone scams of any kind and block robocalls and scam texts before they can make it to your phone. That spam-blocking app is called Robokiller.
One of the biggest password compilations ever was leaked today. The file, which is titled RockYou2024.txt, contains a massive 9,948,575,739 unique plaintext passwords. It was posted by a forum user that goes by the name of "ObamaCare."
As reported by Cybernews (via TechTadar), the RockYou2024.txt file contains passwords stolen in a mix of old and new attacks. Three years ago, the RockYou2021 password compilation exposed 8.4 billion plain text passwords. Today's leak adds an extra 1.5 billion passwords.
Brute-force refers to a technique hackers use to crack passwords by writing a program that automatically tries every single combination of letters and numbers. A simple password like "1234" can be cracked within seconds by a basic brute-force attack.
Additionally, the RockYou2024 leak can also make it easy for attackers to use a technique called credential stuffing. Credential stuffing is a form of brute-force password attack that takes advantage of people who recycle their login information, also known as password reuse.
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