#oh apparently we have multiple package thieves

[iguessitsjustme]

My neighbor is speaking to the police right outside my door. Bruh what’s going on???

[harveywritings92]

How you met: Shay x Death Doula! Reader

Info on the reader's profession: A Death Doula is a person who assists in the dying process, unlike a regular doula who offer assistance for women in labor, Death Doula's deal with well... death! But they don't deal exclusively with just children, they were like an early version of grief counselors mixed with hospice nurse and funeral director all rolled into one package, their service list would include: Giving emotional,social and Psychological support, creating death plans, helping with funeral and memorial planning, and guiding mourners to their rights and responsibilities.

===================================

Shay was assigned by Haytham to investigate the rumor that a previous dead member was apparently alive and well. They were dismissed as just so... until, Thomas Hickey appeared before the grand master claiming to have seen the man, a one Robert Bancroft a former banker and tradesman wandering the New York market district, now that wouldn't be strange except Robert had dead for three months now! And what's more, apparently the late Mr. Bancroft has also gone on to calling himself Philip McCray not much info on that name though.

Haytham sent Shay to figure out this mystery, To start him off the grand master directed the former assassin to the home of an Undertaker: Father's name [l/n] seems there been a disturbance at his place of business that might just give them a lead to this mystery. 

Shay was wary at approaching the large manor-like funeral home he heard whispers and accusations of the undertaker being a demon butcher who cut up bodies and ate their livers, others that he'd chop the limbs off and sew them to other bodies and used dark arts on them. Though Mr. Franklin who was an old friend of Mr. L/n assured Shay that those rumors were hogwash; what the experiments undertaker does with the deceased was simply a misunderstood science that will one day change the way everyone looks at life and death.

That didn't do much to calm the Irishman's nerves as the smell of Incense invaded his nose the closer he got closer the the mortuary, Shy paused for a moment to admire the birdcage shaped censers hanging by the door he thought them they were lanterns, but duty calls Shay walked inside where smell of lavender potpourri lingered in the air and the sound of arguing invaded his ears Shay followed where the voices were coming from and found himself in a large sitting room, where a y/ht y/hc woman in a black and purple dress around his age was arguing with older man.

"Well someone has to do something about this, The man's wife thinks we're hiding him!"

"I said no! No interrogations, no investigations, no bloody mystery solving! This will blow over soon."

"Yes and meantime Mr.Cray's wife is telling everyone under the sun, about how I'm some husband stealing harlot, While at the same time some ne'er-do-well going around pretending to the man!"

"The woman is grieving Y/n, you've been trained to recognize such delusions, she saw him die, their friend saw him die and...and..."

The man's voice trailed off finally noticing Shay watching them, he straightened himself up and cleared his throat, while the woman whip her head around to see what got his attention."Oh, a customer, Y/n go make some tea for... um" The Templar held his hand out. "Shay Cormac, and that won't be necessary... I'm here regarding a break-in three months ago?" the undertaker looked uncomfortable as he look at Y/n who this knowing smirk on her face. 

“Yes we.. Well my daughter's office was broken into..." He led Shay to back of the manor to Y/n's office now that the Irishman could get a good look at her noting some resemblance between her and the undertaker they both had the same eye/hair color, they got to the office as Y/n spoke up as the assassin hunter looked around.

Soon Mr. L/n left and Y/n took over "Thieves weren't after any trinkets or valuables." She directed him to a large row of cabinets with a broken locks, "they were only after papers & records of the recently deceased, and was very careful at who he was selecting." She showed him an old file with details of that person's life. {Identification papers, birthplace place and cause of death etc.] and sketches of the deceased persons face she explained they used them for an "in case" scenario of multiple funerals in one day and if the families have the same or similar sounding names.

"Here's the man whose papers were stolen" she said handing the Templar the sketch he took out a small painting of Bancroft and compared the two "This is very well done." Shay commented taking in the sketch's detail right down to the scars and birthmarks. "Uh, thank you?" Y/n said incredulously not used to hearing her work be complimented especially from a man, Shay wasn't joking when he said it was good this McCray could be Bancroft's twin, Except...

Shay checked the death record McCray had black hair, Bancroft was blond, his first thought was a wig but the way Hickey had described the bloke his hair looked too natural to be a wig, nor did it look like soot and grease as Lee had suggested, was he using ink? his dark eyes glance over at a Y/n  looking out the window shaking her head at something.

 "Is there way darken one's hair color, without wigs or ink?" the assassin hunter asked not being familiar with cosmetics, Y/n cocked a brow as she thought. "Yes through henna and katam." Shay gave her a confused look Y/n sighed and took off her gloves and pulled up her sleeve to reveal a very impressive tattoo on her hand.

Shay took her hand her to get a better look, if it wasn't fading he'd almost mistaken another glove, the lotus design was delicate the way the ink ringed around her fingers like lace was almost fairy-like. "This is mehndi art made with henna it's a type of dye made from tree dyes from India, it can also be used to change hair color...if mix with the right components." She explained the as the Irish man flipped her hand over to stare at the moon design on her wrist.

"How long does this usually last for?" He asked giving her hand back. "Well depending on type and quality three weeks? applying oils is a good way to extend it." Y/n stated as she put her gloves back on. *who'd thought that wedding tribute for my friend in India would come in handy?* She thought not noticing Shay's attention suddenly shifted to the window, in a split second the large man suddenly yanked Y/n towards him using his body to shield her from her window exploding; glass shards flew everywhere as rocks were thrown through the window! 

Followed by a woman screaming "PHILIP KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE!?" then there was some struggling Shay pulled away from Y/n the two went the window to see what happened, the Irishman kept her behind him just in case. as they watched a hysterical woman throwing rocks at the funeral home, as a man and two women and adolescent boy struggled to control her.

"PHILIP COME OUT!" The man finally got a hold of her. "Stop this right now Sarah, Philip is dead!" the Sarah shook her head not believing him as the women pleaded with her to listen to her brother, she gasped seeing Y/n and Shay watching her "GIVE HIM BACK YOU WHORE!?!?" Sarah screeched ready to throw a another rock as her brother dragged her away.

the boy walked over over to the shattered window. "I...I'm sorry for my mother Miss Y/n, My aunt says they'll pay for the window..." The y/hc woman the boy off. "Don't worry about it I know it's not your mother's fault." She assured as they watched his aunts and uncle load his mother into a carriage. the boy then looked around making sure his mother couldn't hear.

"Is it true?"  

"Absolutely not, I'm not hiding your father..."

"No, not that I know fathers gone, I meant...I heard things about you being able to speak to the dead, solving murders?"

"I don't speak to dead, I speak for the dead and I swear on your father's resting soul, I will find out whose behind this and bring peace to your mother."

The boy thanked her and went to join his family, Y/n winced hears Mrs. McCray scream at the top of her lungs "I WON'T LET YOU HAVE MY BOY!?" before being restrained by her sisters-in law as her brother shook his head clearly at loss and tired of his sister fits, as they rode away...

"Speak for the dead, eh?" Shay queried sounding amused and intrigued as Y/n averted her eyes embarrassed /face red from embarrassment as she thought he'd gone to find her father once Mrs. McCray was whisked away, "Well being a death doula, that is what I do in a way..." they were suddenly interrupted by her father entering the study, wooden planks under one arm hammer and nails in the other "Except most death doulas don't go on path of Derring-do just because they think someones a killer." Y/n looked offended at her father's words.

"Well I wasn't wrong before!" she huffed agitating her father more. "Stay out of it." he warned boarding her window up, he then turned to their visitor. "And you've got your evidence Cormac, Now I suggest you take you leave." Shay bid the last name's farewell, but before he reached the door he was stopped by Y/n grabbing his arm "Mr. Cormac, when you find this man." She made her father wasn't listening; he'd blow a gasket if he found out she was meddling. 

"If possible I would like you to return him here," Shay's brows furrowed at this request, "Here, why?" he asked confused over why she would want the thief whose caused her so much disarray in her house. "I think it might help if Mrs. McCray saw "Philip" for herself." Irishman nodded seemly understanding what the y/nat woman was planning. "I'll see if can keep him in one piece." He noted Y/n hadn't let go of his arm. "Is there something else you wanted" The y/ht woman fidgeted for a moment.

"Erm...Yes, if it doesn't trouble you, perhaps I could help you again?" Shay blinked wondering if he heard right? meanwhile Y/n inner thoughts were going haywire. "You idiot, why would you ask him? no man wants the creepy undertaker’s daughter especially someone as handsome as-" Shay's broke through her pity party. "That wouldn't trouble me at all." Y/n up at Shay who looked equally startled by his words.

Cue an awkward starring contest before Y/n realized she was still holding his arm, letting him go the y/hc shyly averted her eyes to the floor/cheeks went pink, Shay was thankful for that she couldn't see the tips of his ears were red, he calmed himself before walking out of the funeral home. "I'll see you again." he promised before heading back to Haytham with his findings.  

[jennifersnyderca90]

How Cybercrooks Put the Beatdown on My Beats

Last month Yours Truly got snookered by a too-good-to-be-true online scam in which some dirtball hijacked an Amazon merchant’s account and used it to pimp steeply discounted electronics that he never intended to sell. Amazon refunded my money, and the legitimate seller never did figure out how his account was hacked. But such attacks are becoming more prevalent of late as crooks increasingly turn to online crimeware services that make it a cakewalk to cash out stolen passwords.

The elusive Sonos Play:5

The item at Amazon that drew me to this should-have-known-better bargain was a Sonos wireless speaker that is very pricey and as a consequence has hung on my wish list for quite some time. Then I noticed an established seller with great feedback on Amazon was advertising a “new” model of the same speaker for 32 percent off. So on March 4, I purchased it straight away — paying for it with my credit card via Amazon’s one-click checkout.

A day later I received a nice notice from the seller stating that the item had shipped. Even Amazon’s site seemed to be fooled because for several days Amazon’s package tracking system updated its progress slider bar steadily from left to right.

Suddenly the package seemed to stall, as did any updates about where it was or when it might arrive. This went on for almost a week. On March 10, I received an email from the legitimate owner of the seller’s account stating that his account had been hacked.

Identifying myself as a reporter, I asked the seller to tell me what he knew about how it all went down. He agreed to talk if I left his name out of it.

“Our seller’s account email address was changed,” he wrote. “One night everything was fine and the next morning our seller account had a email address not associated with us. We could not access our account for a week. Fake electronic products were added to our storefront.”

He couldn’t quite explain the fake tracking number claim, but nevertheless the tactic does seem to be part of an overall effort to delay suspicion on the part of the buyer while the crook seeks to maximize the number of scam sales in a short period of time.

“The hacker then indicated they were shipped with fake tracking numbers on both the fake products they added and the products we actually sell,” the seller wrote. “They were only looking to get funds through Amazon. We are working with Amazon to refund all money that were spent buying these false products.”

As these things go, the entire ordeal wasn’t awful — aside maybe from the six days spent in great anticipation of audiophilic nirvana (alas, after my refund I thought better of the purchase and put the item back on my wish list.) But apparently I was in plenty of good (or bad?) company.

The Wall Street Journal notes that in recent weeks “attackers have changed the bank-deposit information on Amazon accounts of active sellers to steal tens of thousands of dollars from each, according to several sellers and advisers. Attackers also have hacked into the Amazon accounts of sellers who haven’t used them recently to post nonexistent merchandise for sale at steep discounts in an attempt to pocket the cash.”

Perhaps fraudsters are becoming more brazen of late with hacked Amazon accounts, but the same scams mentioned above happen every day on plenty of other large merchandising sites. The sad reality is that hacked Amazon seller accounts have been available for years at underground shops for about half the price of a coffee at Starbucks.

The majority of this commerce is made possible by one or two large account credential vendors in the cybercrime underground, and these vendors have been collecting, vetting and reselling hacked account credentials at major e-commerce sites for years.

I have no idea where the thieves got the credentials for the guy whose account was used to fake sell the Sonos speaker. But it’s likely to have been from a site like SLILPP, a crime shop which specializes in selling hacked Amazon accounts. Currently, the site advertises more than 340,000 Amazon account usernames and passwords for sale.

The price is about USD $2.50 per credential pair. Buyer scan select accounts by balance, country, associated credit/debit card type, card expiration date and last order date. Account credentials that also include the password to the victim’s associated email inbox can double the price.

The Amazon portion of SLILPP, a long-running fraud shop that at any given time has hundreds of thousands of Amazon account credentials for sale.

If memory serves correctly, SLILPP started off years ago mainly as a PayPal and eBay accounts seller (hence the “PP”). “Slil” is transliterated Russian for “слил,” which in this context may mean “leaked,” “download” or “to steal,” as in password data that has leaked or been stolen in other breaches. SLILPP has vastly expanded his store in the years since: It currently advertises more than 7.1 million credentials for sale from hundreds of popular bank and e-commerce sites.

The site’s proprietor has been at this game so long he probably deserves a story of his own soon, but for now I’ll say only that he seems to do a brisk business buying up credentials being gathered by credential-testing crime crews — cyber thieves who spend a great deal of time harvesting and enriching credentials stolen and/or leaked from major data breaches at social networking and e-commerce providers in recent years.

SLILPP’s main inventory page.

Fraudsters can take a list of credentials stolen from, say, the Myspace.com breach (in which some 427 million credentials were posted online) and see how many of those email address and password pairs from the MySpace accounts also work at hundreds of other bank and e-commerce sites.

Password thieves often then turn to crimeware-as-a-service tools like Sentry MBA, which can vastly simplify the process of checking a list of account credentials at multiple sites. To make blocking their password-checking activities more challenging for retailers and banks to identify and block, these thieves often try to route the Internet traffic from their password-guessing tools through legions of open Web proxies, hacked PCs or even stolen/carded cloud computing instances.

PASSWORD RE-USE: THE ENGINE OF ALL ONLINE FRAUD

In response, many major retailers are being forced to alert customers when they see known account credential testing activity that results in a successful login (thus suggesting the user’s account credentials were replicated and compromised elsewhere). However, from the customer’s perspective, this is tantamount to the e-commerce provider experiencing a breach even though the user’s penchant for recycling their password across multiple sites is invariably the culprit.

There are a multitude of useful security lessons here, some of which bear repeating because their lack of general observance is the cause of most password woes today (aside from the fact that so many places still rely on passwords and stupid things like “secret questions” in the first place). First and foremost: Do not re-use the same password across multiple sites. Secondly, but equally important: Never re-use your email password anywhere else.

Also, with a few exceptions, password length is generally more important than password complexity, and complex passwords are difficult to remember anyway. I prefer to think in terms of “pass phrases,” which are more like sentences or verses that are easy to remember.

If you have difficult recalling even unique passphrases, a password manager can help you pick and remember strong, unique passwords for each site you interact with, requiring only one strong master password to unlock any of them. Oh, and if the online account in question allows 2-factor authentication, be sure to take advantage of that.

I hope it’s clear that Amazon is just one of the many platforms where fraudsters lurk. SLILPP currently is selling stolen credentials for nearly 500 other banks and e-commerce sites. The full list of merchants targeted by this particularly bustling fraud shop is here (.txt file).

As for the “buyer beware” aspect of this tale, in retrospect there were several warning signs that I either ignored or neglected to assign much weight. For starters, the deal that snookered me was for a luxury product on sale for 32 percent off without much explanation as to why the apparently otherwise pristine item was so steeply discounted.

Also, while the seller had a stellar history of selling products on Amazon for many years (with overwhelmingly positive feedback on virtually all of his transactions) he did not have a history of selling the type of product that thieves tried to sell through his account. The old adage “If something seems too good to be true, it probably is,” ages really well in cyberspace.

from https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/04/how-cybercrooks-put-the-beatdown-on-my-beats/

[amberdscott2]

How Cybercrooks Put the Beatdown on My Beats

Last month Yours Truly got snookered by a too-good-to-be-true online scam in which some dirtball hijacked an Amazon merchant’s account and used it to pimp steeply discounted electronics that he never intended to sell. Amazon refunded my money, and the legitimate seller never did figure out how his account was hacked. But such attacks are becoming more prevalent of late as crooks increasingly turn to online crimeware services that make it a cakewalk to cash out stolen passwords.

The elusive Sonos Play:5

The item at Amazon that drew me to this should-have-known-better bargain was a Sonos wireless speaker that is very pricey and as a consequence has hung on my wish list for quite some time. Then I noticed an established seller with great feedback on Amazon was advertising a “new” model of the same speaker for 32 percent off. So on March 4, I purchased it straight away — paying for it with my credit card via Amazon’s one-click checkout.

A day later I received a nice notice from the seller stating that the item had shipped. Even Amazon’s site seemed to be fooled because for several days Amazon’s package tracking system updated its progress slider bar steadily from left to right.

Suddenly the package seemed to stall, as did any updates about where it was or when it might arrive. This went on for almost a week. On March 10, I received an email from the legitimate owner of the seller’s account stating that his account had been hacked.

Identifying myself as a reporter, I asked the seller to tell me what he knew about how it all went down. He agreed to talk if I left his name out of it.

“Our seller’s account email address was changed,” he wrote. “One night everything was fine and the next morning our seller account had a email address not associated with us. We could not access our account for a week. Fake electronic products were added to our storefront.”

He couldn’t quite explain the fake tracking number claim, but nevertheless the tactic does seem to be part of an overall effort to delay suspicion on the part of the buyer while the crook seeks to maximize the number of scam sales in a short period of time.

“The hacker then indicated they were shipped with fake tracking numbers on both the fake products they added and the products we actually sell,” the seller wrote. “They were only looking to get funds through Amazon. We are working with Amazon to refund all money that were spent buying these false products.”

As these things go, the entire ordeal wasn’t awful — aside maybe from the six days spent in great anticipation of audiophilic nirvana (alas, after my refund I thought better of the purchase and put the item back on my wish list.) But apparently I was in plenty of good (or bad?) company.

The Wall Street Journal notes that in recent weeks “attackers have changed the bank-deposit information on Amazon accounts of active sellers to steal tens of thousands of dollars from each, according to several sellers and advisers. Attackers also have hacked into the Amazon accounts of sellers who haven’t used them recently to post nonexistent merchandise for sale at steep discounts in an attempt to pocket the cash.”

Perhaps fraudsters are becoming more brazen of late with hacked Amazon accounts, but the same scams mentioned above happen every day on plenty of other large merchandising sites. The sad reality is that hacked Amazon seller accounts have been available for years at underground shops for about half the price of a coffee at Starbucks.

The majority of this commerce is made possible by one or two large account credential vendors in the cybercrime underground, and these vendors have been collecting, vetting and reselling hacked account credentials at major e-commerce sites for years.

I have no idea where the thieves got the credentials for the guy whose account was used to fake sell the Sonos speaker. But it’s likely to have been from a site like SLILPP, a crime shop which specializes in selling hacked Amazon accounts. Currently, the site advertises more than 340,000 Amazon account usernames and passwords for sale.

The price is about USD $2.50 per credential pair. Buyer scan select accounts by balance, country, associated credit/debit card type, card expiration date and last order date. Account credentials that also include the password to the victim’s associated email inbox can double the price.

The Amazon portion of SLILPP, a long-running fraud shop that at any given time has hundreds of thousands of Amazon account credentials for sale.

If memory serves correctly, SLILPP started off years ago mainly as a PayPal and eBay accounts seller (hence the “PP”). “Slil” is transliterated Russian for “слил,” which in this context may mean “leaked,” “download” or “to steal,” as in password data that has leaked or been stolen in other breaches. SLILPP has vastly expanded his store in the years since: It currently advertises more than 7.1 million credentials for sale from hundreds of popular bank and e-commerce sites.

The site’s proprietor has been at this game so long he probably deserves a story of his own soon, but for now I’ll say only that he seems to do a brisk business buying up credentials being gathered by credential-testing crime crews — cyber thieves who spend a great deal of time harvesting and enriching credentials stolen and/or leaked from major data breaches at social networking and e-commerce providers in recent years.

SLILPP’s main inventory page.

Fraudsters can take a list of credentials stolen from, say, the Myspace.com breach (in which some 427 million credentials were posted online) and see how many of those email address and password pairs from the MySpace accounts also work at hundreds of other bank and e-commerce sites.

Password thieves often then turn to crimeware-as-a-service tools like Sentry MBA, which can vastly simplify the process of checking a list of account credentials at multiple sites. To make blocking their password-checking activities more challenging for retailers and banks to identify and block, these thieves often try to route the Internet traffic from their password-guessing tools through legions of open Web proxies, hacked PCs or even stolen/carded cloud computing instances.

PASSWORD RE-USE: THE ENGINE OF ALL ONLINE FRAUD

In response, many major retailers are being forced to alert customers when they see known account credential testing activity that results in a successful login (thus suggesting the user’s account credentials were replicated and compromised elsewhere). However, from the customer’s perspective, this is tantamount to the e-commerce provider experiencing a breach even though the user’s penchant for recycling their password across multiple sites is invariably the culprit.

There are a multitude of useful security lessons here, some of which bear repeating because their lack of general observance is the cause of most password woes today (aside from the fact that so many places still rely on passwords and stupid things like “secret questions” in the first place). First and foremost: Do not re-use the same password across multiple sites. Secondly, but equally important: Never re-use your email password anywhere else.

Also, with a few exceptions, password length is generally more important than password complexity, and complex passwords are difficult to remember anyway. I prefer to think in terms of “pass phrases,” which are more like sentences or verses that are easy to remember.

If you have difficult recalling even unique passphrases, a password manager can help you pick and remember strong, unique passwords for each site you interact with, requiring only one strong master password to unlock any of them. Oh, and if the online account in question allows 2-factor authentication, be sure to take advantage of that.

I hope it’s clear that Amazon is just one of the many platforms where fraudsters lurk. SLILPP currently is selling stolen credentials for nearly 500 other banks and e-commerce sites. The full list of merchants targeted by this particularly bustling fraud shop is here (.txt file).

As for the “buyer beware” aspect of this tale, in retrospect there were several warning signs that I either ignored or neglected to assign much weight. For starters, the deal that snookered me was for a luxury product on sale for 32 percent off without much explanation as to why the apparently otherwise pristine item was so steeply discounted.

Also, while the seller had a stellar history of selling products on Amazon for many years (with overwhelmingly positive feedback on virtually all of his transactions) he did not have a history of selling the type of product that thieves tried to sell through his account. The old adage “If something seems too good to be true, it probably is,” ages really well in cyberspace.

from Amber Scott Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/04/how-cybercrooks-put-the-beatdown-on-my-beats/