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Payment service provider executives arrested over a credit card fraud ring Meta makes a fortune showing scam ads South Korean telco KT tried to hide a second breach and five more scammers are sentenced to death in China. This is the risky bulletin prepared by Catalyn Kimpanu and read by me, Claire airdrop. Today is the 7th of November and this podcast episode is brought to you by Sublime Security, an email security platform that's not a black box. In today's top story, 18 suspects have been arrested over their roles in credit card fraud. The group stole credit card details and subscribed owners to fake pornography, dating and streaming websites. Individual cards were charged about euro 50amonth. The scheme netted the group more than 300 million euros since it began in 2016. The five of those detained held executive roles at German payment service providers. Europol says the executives let the fraudsters use their company networks in exchange for a fee. In other news, roughly 10% of Meta's annual revenue comes from advertisements selling banned products or scams, according to Reuters. The company made more than $16 billion from shady ads last year, according to internal documents cited by Reuters. Meta would just charge higher fees to known scammers rather than block their accounts. The report also said Meta executives agreed to only address scams when there was a likelihood of regulatory action. UK mobile carriers will start blocking calls from spoofed phone numbers in 2026. The companies will flag incoming international calls to prevent scammers from impersonating UK phone numbers. The telcos will also roll out new technology to assist law enforcement with track scammers. Five people have been sentenced to death in China for operating cyberscam compounds in Myanmar. Five others were handed life sentences, while nine more have been incarcerated for up to 20 years. All were members of the Bai crime family. In September, 11 members of the Ming crime family were also sentenced to death for similar crimes. Georgian authorities have arrested a German national over his involvement in online scams. The suspect was an alleged member of the scam empire. The group made more than $275 million through its call centres in Eastern Europe, Israel and Georgia. In March, a joint investigation by 32 media outlets exposed the group. Iraqi police have arrested a 14 year old boy over an extortion campaign that led to the suicide of several children. He's accused of recruiting victims via the game Roblox and luring them to online communities that he operated. The victims were pressured into acts of sexual self harm, animal abuse and suicide. Thirty children across several Arab countries took their own lives. South Korean telco KT hid details of a second security breach this year. The telco discovered the BPF door malware on 43 servers and tried to clean it up without notifying authorities. The breach was found during a government investigation into an earlier security incident that involved fraudulent micropayments. A cyber attack has disrupted the TV and radio transmissions of a Dutch broadcaster. Hackers defaced the website of RTV Nord and employees were unable to log in. Radio DJs had to change CDs by hand until systems were restored. The hack occurred on Thursday morning and the impact lasted several hours. British retailer Marks and Spencer reported a drop in its annual profits due to its security breach in April. The company's mid year profits were down by 136 million pounds compared to the same period last year. Executives expect profitability to return to normal by March next year. Five Cambodian nationals have been arrested in Vietnam over their roles in romance scams. The suspects were part of a gang that operated out of the Cambodian city of Bavet. They fled to Vietnam after a recent government crackdown on scam compounds. South Korea requested the arrests after the group scammed its residents out of $3.2 million. The original sentence of Capital One hacker Paige Thompson has been reinstated. Thompson was sentenced to time served and a five year probation period in 2022. In March this year, a US appeals court vacated that sentence for being too lenient and prosecutors requested a seven year prison term. The judge said the original sentence would stand because Thompson would not receive the appropriate gender transition medical care while incarcerated. Socket Security has discovered malicious NuGet packages designed to sabotage databases and industrial control systems. The packages were published in 2023 and 2024. They're designed to run malicious code after specific trigger dates in 2027 and 2028. Eight of the packages target database systems and have a 20% chance of shutting down the databases after the trigger date. The ninth package targets industrial PLCs after June. 6. This package will block PLCs from writing new data, rendering them inoperable. The Gootloader botnet has returned with new campaigns after more than a year of inactivity. The botnet is continuing to use SEO poisoning to redirect traffic to malicious sites. The sites infect users with malware. Bootloader is then used to deploy other malware, including multiple strains of ransomware. Security researchers have linked a new Linux backdoor to a cyber contractor for the Chinese state security firms, Nvizo said. The V Shell was first spotted in August and is the work of a group tracked as UNC5174. Google has previously linked the group to China's Ministry of State Security. Russian military hackers have deployed new data wipers in Ukraine. The Sandworm group targeted government agencies as well as companies in Ukraine's energy, logistics and grain sectors. Payloads included two new data wipers, STING and 0 LOT ESET. Researchers believe the attacks were designed to weaken Ukraine's economy. The US Department of Justice has approved Google's acquisition of Israeli cloud security company Wiz. Google agreed to acquire Wiz in March for $32 billion and entered an antitrust review in June. The deal is expected to close in 2026. And finally, Google has updated Chrome's autofill feature to support government issued IDs. The browser will be able to remember and autom fill in passport data and driver licenses. The company plans to add support for more data types in the coming months. And that is all for this podcast edition. Today's show was brought to you by our sponsor Sublime Security. Find them at Sublime Security thanks to your company.