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06.01.19 Credit Cards

He Put a Rsum Online and Got Tricked Into Exporting Weapons to Russia

He applied to a job online and fell for a work from home scam, but this wasnt your average online racket. Douglas Glover got tricked into trying to send weapons to Russia and thinking federal agents were package thievesand now hes serving a federal prison sentence for the mistake.

When Alabama 37-year-old Douglas Glover saw a job ad on Monster.com offering a chance to work from home in 2016, it seemed like a pretty good gig. Someone using the name Ginger M. Towers from a company calling itself North Star Freight offered him $25 for every package he managed to send out.

Gingers English didnt seem so greatYou is to serve a probationary period of 28 daysbut the money was. Glover hadnt been held full time in years when the company reached out to him, and so a steady paycheck that allowed him to work from home was welcome. Unfortunately for Glover, it wasnt a legitimate logistics job.

Con artists often claim, either in online advertisements or in work from home! fliers stapled to telephone poles, that you can make money in the comfort of your own home re-shipping packages to customers.

These re-shipment scams have ballooned over the years because theyre an important cog in the logistics of cybercrime. Crooks steal credit cards and financial data and use it to buy high-end goods but often have trouble convincing retailers to ship the ill-gotten goods to Eastern Europe and other places where fraud scams have made a number of companies wary of deliveries. Scammers have solved their logistics problem by recruiting unsuspecting victims to receive the purchases in the U.S., where deliveries seem less suspicious, and re-send the loot abroad.

In Glovers case, his job as a re-shipper left him open not just to fraud charges, but arms export violations, too. The Daily Beast reached out to the U.S. Attorneys office and Glovers attorneys; both declined to comment.

The trouble for Glover began when postal inspectors intercepted a package containing an iPad bought with a stolen credit card and shipped to his home. Federal investigators told Glover they believed he was an unknowing participant being used as a mule for a criminal enterprise. They showed him a voluntary discontinuance statement and asked him to promise that he wouldnt ship any more packages for the company or else face federal charges. Glover readily signed it.

After his run-in with postal inspectors, Glover emailed his bosses at North Star Freight and wrote: I hate to inform u but i can not receive packages anymore. So i am quitting this position. Please stop shipment of any other packages. He also sent along information about four packages in transit to his home and asked investigators to set up a time where he could hand them over once they arrived.

There the trouble might have ended for Glover but for one last trick his employers played on him.

Ginger bombarded Glover with emails flagged urgent and convinced him that he hadnt been talking with federal law enforcement after all but rather fraudsters who sent possibly fake email messages to steal the packages he had been assigned to ship. The emails from postal inspectors, she claimed, looked like they had come from a phony domain and the phone calls from them couldve come from throwaway voice-over IP numbers, she said.

When postal inspectors finally did get back in touch with him after nearly a week of silence, Glover told them of his suspicions and said hed have to talk with his Russian supervisors.

In the meantime, Glover tried to mail out more packages. Rather than the usual illicit iPad fare, the company had sent him two boxes with something inside altogether riskier to ship out: 50 high-capacity AK-47 magazines marked as toy parts to send to addresses in Russia with counterfeit postage.

This time, when federal agents showed up at Glovers door, he knew they werent the fraudsters his employers had claimed. He admitted to knowing that the boxes contained gun magazines and accepted a deal with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to one count of attempted unlawful exportation of firearms. He agreed to give up the weapons parts he didnt ship to Russia to the U.S. government.

He was sentenced to 16 months in prison in April and reported to prison on May 14.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/he-put-a-resume-online-and-got-tricked-into-exporting-weapons-to-russia

09.14.17 Telecom

US government bans Kaspersky software citing fears about Russian intelligence

Three months after the General Services Administration removed Kaspersky Lab from a list of approved federal vendors, Homeland Security is banning the Russian security software maker outright. In a statement on Wednesday, DHS Acting Secretary Elaine Duke directed all Executive Branch agencies and departments to identify over the next 30 days any Kaspersky products being used, make a plan in the next 60 days to eliminate their use and begin that discontinuation within 90 days.

“The Department is concerned about the ties between certain Kaspersky officials and Russian intelligence and other government agencies, and requirements under Russian law that allow Russian intelligence agencies to request or compel assistance from Kaspersky and to intercept communications transiting Russian networks,” DHS said in its directive.

“The risk that the Russian government, whether acting on its own or in collaboration with Kaspersky, could capitalize on access provided by Kaspersky products to compromise federal information and information systems directly implicates U.S. national security.”

At the end of its full statement on the issue, available here, DHS states that it will allow Kaspersky and “any other entity that claims its commercial interests will be directly impacted” to submit a written argument along with any evidence or data that could offset the U.S. government’s concerns.

Kaspersky fired back at the decision with its own statement, available in full below:

Given that Kaspersky Lab doesn’t have inappropriate ties with any government, the company is disappointed with the decision by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but also is grateful for the opportunity to provide additional information to the agency in order to confirm that these allegations are completely unfounded.

No credible evidence has been presented publicly by anyone or any organization as the accusations are based on false allegations and inaccurate assumptions, including claims about the impact of Russian regulations and policies on the company. Kaspersky Lab has always acknowledged that it provides appropriate products and services to governments around the world to protect those organizations from cyberthreats, but it does not have unethical ties or affiliations with any government, including Russia.

In addition, more than 85 percent of its revenue comes from outside of Russia, which further demonstrates that working inappropriately with any government would be detrimental to the company’s bottom line. These ongoing accusations also ignore the fact that Kaspersky Lab has a 20-year history in the IT security industry of always abiding by the highest ethical business practices and trustworthy technology development.

Regarding the Russian polices and laws being misinterpreted, the laws and tools in question are applicable to telecom companies and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and contrary to the inaccurate reports, Kaspersky Lab is not subject to these laws or other government tools, including Russia’s System of Operative-Investigative Measures (SORM), since the company doesn’t provide communication services. Also, it’s important to note that the information received by the company, as well as traffic, is protected in accordance with legal requirements and stringent industry standards, including encryption, digital certificates and more.

Kaspersky Lab has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage or offensive cyber efforts, and it’s disconcerting that a private company can be considered guilty until proven innocent, due to geopolitical issues. The company looks forward to working with DHS, as Kaspersky Lab ardently believes a deeper examination of the company will substantiate that these allegations are without merit.

While the new steps from DHS are a strong statement on its suspicions, the truth is murkier. Given the controversy over Kaspersky’s rumored but never clearly substantiated closeness with Russian intelligence, the move might just be erring on the side of caution. Still, to purge Kaspersky products altogether in such a public way sends a strong message, but who the message is to or what if anything it’s actually rooted in remains far from clear.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/13/kaspersky-executive-branch-ban-dhs-homeland-security/

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