For the second time this month, Adobe has issued a security update for its Flash Player software. New versions are available for Windows, Mac and Linux versions of Flash. The patch provides additional protection on a vulnerability that Adobe fixed earlier this year for which attackers appear to have devised unique and active exploits.

Adobe recommends users of the Adobe Flash Player desktop runtime for Windows and Macintosh update to v. 15.0.0.239 by visiting the Adobe Flash Player Download Center, or via the update mechanism within the product when prompted. Adobe Flash Player for Linux has been updated to v. 11.2.202.424. 

According to Adobe, these updates provide additional hardening against CVE-2014-8439, which was fixed in a Flash patch that the company released in October 2014. The bulletin for this update is here. Finnish security firm F-Secure says it reported the flaw to Adobe after receiving information from independent researcher Kafeine that indicated the vulnerability was being exploited in-the-wild by an exploit kit (malicious software designed to be stitched into hacked Web sites and foist malware on visitors via browser flaws like this one).

To see which version of Flash you have installed, check this link. IE10/IE11 on Windows 8.x and Chrome should auto-update their versions of Flash.

The most recent versions of Flash are available from the Flash home page, but beware potentially unwanted add-ons, like McAfee Security Scan. To avoid this, uncheck the pre-checked box before downloading, or grab your OS-specific Flash download from here.

Windows users who browse the Web with anything other than Internet Explorer may need to apply this patch twice, once with IE and again using the alternative browser (Firefox, Opera, e.g.).

Greetings from sunny Austin, Texas, where I’m getting ready to wrap up a week-long book tour that began in New York City, then blazed through Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle. I’ve been trying to tweet links to various media interviews about Spam Nation over the past week, but wanted to offer a more comprehensive account and to share some highlights of the tour.

For three days starting last Sunday, I was in New York City — doing a series of back-to-back television and radio interviews. Prior to leaving for New York, I taped television interviews with Jeffrey Brown at the PBS NewsHour; the first segment delves into some of the points touched on in the book, and the second piece is titled “Why it’s harder than you think to go ‘off the grid’.”

On Monday, I was fortunate to once again be a guest on Terri Gross‘s show Fresh Air, which you can hear at this link. Tuesday morning began with a five-minute appearance on CBS This Morning, which included a sit-down with Charlie Rose, Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell. Later in the day, I was interviewed by the MarketPlace Tech Report, MSNBC’s The Cycle, as well as the Tavis Smiley show. Wednesday was a mercifully light day, with just two interviews: KGO-AM and the Jim Bohannon Radio Show.

Thursday’s round of media appearances began at around sunrise in the single-digit temperature Chicago suburbs. My driver from the hotel to all of these events took me aback at first. Roxanna was a petite blonde from Romania who could have just as easily been a supermodel. I thought for a moment someone was playing a practical joke when I first heard her “Gud mornink Meester Krebs” in a Eastern European accent upon stepping into her Town Car, but Roxanna was a knowledgeable driver who got us everywhere on time and didn’t take any crap from anyone on the road.

The first of those interviews was a television segment for WGN News and a taped interview with TouchVision, followed by my first interview in front of a studio audience at Windy City Live.  The guest who went on right before me was none other than the motivational speaker/life coach Tony Robbins, who is a tough act to follow and was also on the show to promote his new book. At six feet seven inches, Robbins is a larger-than-life guy whose mere presence almost took up half the green room. Anyway Mr. Robbins had quite the security detail, so I took this stealthie of Tony as he was confined to the makeup chair prior to his appearance.

On Thursday afternoon, after an obligatory lunch at the infamous Billy Goat burger joint (the inspiration for the “Cheezborger, cheezborger, cheezborger” Saturday Night Live skit) I visited the Sourcebooks office in Naperville, met many of the folks who worked on Spam Nation, signed a metric ton of books and the company’s author wall.

After an amazing dinner with my sister and the CEO of Sourcebooks, we headed to my first book signing event just down the street. It was a well-attended event with some passionate readers and fans, including quite a few folks from @BurbsecWest with whom I had beers afterwards.

On Friday, I hopped a plane to San Francisco and sat down for taped interviews with USA Today and Bloomberg News. The book signing that night at Books Inc. drew a nice crowd and also was followed by some after-event celebration.

Departed for Seattle the next morning, and sat down for a studio interview with longtime newsman (and general mensch) Herb Weisbaum at KOMO-AM. The signing in Seattle, at Third Place Books, was the largest turnout of all, and included a very inquisitive crowd that bought up all of the copies of Spam Nation that the store had on hand.

If you’re planning to be in Austin tonight — Nov. 24 — consider stopping by B&N Arboretum at 7:00 p.m. and get your copy of Spam Nation signed. I’ll be holding one more signing — 7:00 p.m. in Washington, D.C.’s Politics & Prose on Dec. 4.

For those on the fence about buying Spam Nation, Slate and LinkedIn both ran excerpts of the book. Other reviews and interviews are available at Fortune.com, Yahoo News, and CreditCards.com. Also, I was interviewed at length several times over the past month by CBS’s 60 Minutes, which is doing a segment on retail data breaches. That interview could air as early as Nov. 30. On that note, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a lengthy story on Sunday that followed up on some information I first reported a year ago about a Ukrainian man thought to be tied to the Target breach, among others.

In April 2014, this blog featured a story about Lance Ealy, an Ohio man arrested last year for buying Social Security numbers and banking information from an underground identity theft service that relied in part on data obtained through a company owned by big-three credit bureau Experian. Earlier this week, Ealy was convicted of using the data to fraudulently claim tax refunds with the IRS in the names of more than 175 U.S. citizens, but not before he snipped his monitoring anklet and skipped town.

On Nov. 18, a jury in Ohio convicted Ealy, 28, on all 46 charges, including aggravated identity theft, and wire and mail fraud. Government prosecutors presented evidence that Ealy had purchased Social Security numbers and financial data on hundreds of consumers, using an identity theft service called Superget.info (later renamed Findget.me). The jury found that Ealy used that information to fraudulently file at least 179 tax refund requests with the Internal Revenue Service, and to open up bank accounts in other victims’ names — accounts he set up to receive and withdraw tens of thousand of dollars in refund payments from the IRS.

The identity theft service that Ealy used was dismantled in 2013, after investigators with the U.S. Secret Service arrested its proprietor and began tracking and finding many of his customers. Investigators later discovered that the service’s owner had obtained much of the consumer data from data brokers by posing as a private investigator based in the United States.

In reality, the owner of Superget.info was a Vietnamese man paying for his accounts at data brokers using cash wire transfers from a bank in Singapore. Among the companies that Ngo signed up with was Court Ventures, a California company that was bought by credit bureau Experian nine months before the government shut down Superget.info.

Court records show that Ealy went to great lengths to delay his trial, and even reached out to this reporter hoping that I would write about his allegations that everyone from his lawyer to the judge in the case was somehow biased against him or unfit to participate in his trial. Early on, Ealy fired his attorney, and opted to represent himself. When the court appointed him a public defender, Ealy again choose to represent himself.

“Mr. Ealy’s motions were in a lot of respects common delay tactics that defendants use to try to avoid the inevitability of a trial,” said Alex Sistla, an assistant U.S. attorney in Ohio who helped prosecute the case.

Ealy also continued to steal peoples’ identities while he was on trial (although no longer buying from Superget.info), according to the government. His bail was revoked for several months, but in October the judge in the case ordered him released on a surety bond.

It is said that a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client, and this seems doubly true when facing criminal charges by the U.S. government. Ealy’s trial lasted 11 days, and involved more than 70 witnesses — many of the ID theft victims. His last appearance in court was on Friday. When investigators checked in on Ealy at his home over the weekend, they found his electronic monitoring bracelet but not Ealy.

Ealy faces up to 10 years in prison on each count of possessing 15 or more unauthorized access devices with intent to defraud and using unauthorized access devices to obtain items of $1,000 or more in value; up to five years in prison on each count of filing false claims for income tax refunds with the IRS; up to 20 years in prison on each count of wire fraud and each count of mail fraud; and mandatory two-year sentences on each count of aggravated identity theft that must run consecutive to whatever sentence may ultimately be handed down. Each count of conviction also carries a fine of up to $250,000.

I hope they find Mr. Ealy soon and lock him up for a very long time. Unfortunately, he is one of countless fraudsters perpetrating this costly and disruptive form of identity theft. In 2014, both my sister and I were the victims of tax ID theft, learning that unknown fraudsters had already filed tax refunds in our names when we each filed our taxes with the IRS.

I would advise all U.S. readers to request a tax filing PIN from the IRS (sadly, it turns out that I applied for mine in Feburary, only days after the thieves filed my tax return). If approved, the PIN is required on any tax return filed for that consumer before a return can be accepted. To start the process of applying for a tax return PIN from the IRS, check out the steps at this link. You will almost certainly need to file an IRS form 14039 (PDF), and provide scanned or photocopied records, such a drivers license or passport.

To read more about other ID thieves who were customers of Superget.info that the Secret Service has nabbed and put on trial, check out the stories in this series. Ealy’s account on Twitter is an also an eye-opener.

Microsoft today deviated from its regular pattern of releasing security updates on the second Tuesday of each month, pushing out an emergency patch to plug a security hole in all supported versions of Windows. The company urged Windows users to install the update as quickly as possible, noting that miscreants already are exploiting the weaknesses to launch targeted attacks.

The update (MS14-068) addresses a bug in a Windows component called Microsoft Windows Kerberos KDC, which handles authenticating Windows PCs on a local network. It is somewhat less of a problem for Windows home users (it is only rated critical for server versions of Windows) but it poses a serious threat to organizations. According to security vendor Shavlik, the flaw allows an attacker to elevate domain user account privileges to those of the domain administrator account.

“The attacker could forge a Kerberos Ticket and send that to the Kerberos KDC which claims the user is a domain administrator,” writes Chris Goettl, product manager with Shavlik. “From there the attacker can impersonate any domain accounts, add themselves to any group, install programs, view\change\delete date, or create any new accounts they wish.  This could allow the attacker to then compromise any computer in the domain, including domain controllers.  If there is a silver lining in this one it is in the fact that the attacker must have a valid domain user account to exploit the vulnerability, but once they have done so, they have the keys to the kingdom.”

The patch is one of two that Microsoft had expected to release on Patch Tuesday earlier this month, but unexpectedly pulled at the last moment.  “This is pretty severe and definitely explains why Microsoft only delayed the release and did not pull it from the November Patch Tuesday release all together,” Goettl said.

On a separate note, security experts are warning those who haven’t yet fully applied the updates from Patch Tuesday to get on with it already. Researchers with vulnerability exploit development firm Immunity have been detailing their work in devising reliable ways to exploit a critical flaw in Microsoft Secure Channel (a.k.a. “Schannel”), a security package in Windows that handles SSL/TLS encryption — which protects the privacy and security of Web browsing for Windows users. More importantly, there are signs that malicious hackers are devising their own methods of exploiting the flaw to seize control over unpatched Windows systems.

Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer at Qualys, said security researchers were immediately driven to this bulletin as it updates Microsoft’s SSL/TLS implementation fixing Remote Code Execution and Information Leakage that were found internally at Microsoft during a code audit.

“More information has not been made available, but in theory this sounds quite similar in scope to April’s Heartbleed problem in OpenSSL, which was widely publicized and had a number of documented abuse cases,” Kandek wrote in a blog post today. “The dark side is certainly making progress in finding an exploit for these vulnerabilities. It is now high time to patch.”

The breach at office supply chain Staples impacted roughly 100 stores and was powered by some of the same criminal infrastructure seen in the intrusion disclosed earlier this year at Michaels craft stores, according to sources close to the investigation.

Multiple banks interviewed by this author say they’ve received alerts from Visa and MasterCard about cards impacted in the breach at Staples, and that to date those alerts suggest that a subset of Staples stores were compromised between July and September 2014.

Sources briefed on the ongoing investigation say it involved card-stealing malicious software that the intruders installed on cash registers at approximately 100 Staples locations. Framingham, Mass.-based Staples has more than 1,800 stores nationwide.

In response to questions about these details, Staples spokesman Mark Cautela would say only that the company believes it has found and removed the malware responsible for the attack. 

“We are continuing to investigate a data security incident involving an intrusion into some of our retail point of sale and computer systems,” Cautela said in a statement emailed to KrebsOnSecurity. “We believe we have eradicated the malware used in the intrusion and have taken steps to further enhance the security of our network.  The Company is working with law enforcement and is investigating whether any retail transaction data may have been compromised. It is important to note that customers are not responsible for any fraudulent activity on their credit cards that is reported on a timely basis.”

A source close to the investigation said the malware found in Staples stores was communicating with some of the same control networks that attackers used in the intrusion at Michaels, another retail breach that was first disclosed on this blog. Michaels would later acknowledge that the incident was actually two separate, eight-month long breaches that resulted in the theft of more than three million customer credit and debit cards.

The same source compared the breach at Staples to the intrusion recently disclosed at the nationwide grocer chain Albertsons, noting that both breaches resulted in the theft of far fewer customer credit and debit cards that thieves might have stolen in these attacks. It remains unclear what factors may have limited the number of cards stolen in these breaches, particularly compared to tens of millions of cards stolen in breaches at similar nationwide retail chains like Target and Home Depot.

I fully expect that we’ll hear about another major retail chain getting hacked as we approach another Black Friday. Any retailers that are still handling unencrypted credit card data on their networks remain an attractive and lucrative target for attackers.