Retailers Push for ORC Laws
Is Shoplifting Surging? What a Panic Reveals About U.S. Crime Policy.
During an appearance last year on the morning show, Fox and Friends, a former chief executive of Home Depot described a rise in shoplifting in dire terms. "Today, this thing is an epidemic," he said. "It's spreading faster than COVID." The executive joined a long list of industry leaders, from Walmart to Walgreens, encouraging police and prosecutors to crack down on theft. Retailers say they'll be forced to raise prices or shutter affected stores without help to address a growing threat - organized bands of shoplifters ransacking stores with the intent to resell the looted merchandise.

In a handful of states, lawmakers have reacted swiftly. Last year, legislators in California, Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina stiffened penalties for stealing from stores, adding language to target people who act in concert or rob multiple outlets. Under a law amended in Louisiana, for example, anyone caught stealing as part of a group could now face up to seven years in prison.

Retail lobbyists say this kind of theft is a problem for stores large and small in every state. But it's unclear how much worse retail theft has become. National statistics are unreliable. Nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies did not report their most recent crime data to the FBI, The Marshall Project reported in June. Even if they had, most police departments do not have a separate category to distinguish retail theft from other kinds of robberies and larceny.

And yet, lawmakers in at least 11 states are considering legislation that would more harshly punish people caught stealing from stores with the intent to resell merchandise.

Changes to bail policies make it easier to entice people to steal, the federation argues, because they won't spend time in jail before trial should they get caught. The lobbyists also fear that increasing the value of goods someone must steal before triggering a felony charge - a common reform - similarly encourages thefts.

Online marketplaces such as Amazon and Facebook Marketplace have enlarged the market for stolen goods. Criminal enterprises recruit people to steal from stores in exchange for drugs or a small payment. These "boosters" may steal items from multiple stores across state lines. And in recent years, retailers say the episodes are becoming more violent and chaotic.

The main focus, retail lobbyists say, needs to be on punishing the masterminds behind the crime rings who exploit the shoplifters. To do this, the federation encourages lawmakers to enact statutes that create a new category of crime: organized retail theft. The industry defines organized theft as anyone shoplifting for personal gain versus personal use. To date, the federation says it has helped enact such laws in 34 states.

"We want to go after the heads of the snake," said David Johnston, the federation's vice president of asset protection & retail operations. "We want to go after the people who are orchestrating and taking advantage of these folks who serve as boosters."  slate.com


States Fight Back Against ORC
Virginia's new ORC legislation making national headlines

Organized retail theft to become Class 3 felony in Virginia

Those convicted of organized retail theft in Virginia will be eligible for prison sentences of up to 20 years

Virginia lawmakers approved legislation on Thursday that will make organized retail theft a Class 3 felony. Those convicted of the crime will be eligible for prison sentences as long as 20 years.

It will be a Class 3 felony for anyone to conspire or act in concert with one or more people to steal retail merchandise with a value exceeding $5,000 in a 90-day period, with the intent to sell the stolen goods for profit.

"They're not stealing so they can go home and feed their family. This is theft for some kind of financial gain," Republican Del. Kathy Byron, the lead sponsor of the House bill, told The Associated Press.

Byron's bill and a separate one sponsored by Republican Sen. Richard Stuart have met resistance from some Democrats and criminal justice advocates. Opponents said that the legislation could trap people who may resort to stealing to survive.

Notably, the original bills contained a lower theft threshold. The legislation has drawn support from retailers, as well as the Virginia Retail Federation, the Virginia Association of Commonwealth's Attorneys and the National Federation of Independent Business.

At least two dozen states have enacted laws to address organized retail theft, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The National Retail Federation, in its 2022 security survey of retailers, found that inventory loss when taken as a percentage of total retail sales in 2021, accounted for $94.5 billion in losses in 2021, up from $90.8 billion in 2020. foxbusiness.com


The Alarming Rise in Mall Violence
Could it send shoppers back home like COVID did?

Experts worry mall violence could discourage shoppers
Since mid-summer of 2022, five people have been shot to death at central Indiana shopping malls. Retail experts fear that gun violence may discourage shoppers from returning to malls that were empty due to the COVID pandemic of 2020.

"If these incidents become more salient, and unless indoor shopping malls can convince shoppers that they are taking active security measures to mitigate that risk, there is a chance that shoppers like you and I might start preferring open-air shopping malls or even on line shopping," said Professor Vivek Astvansh of the IU Kelley School of Business.

"What the shopping mall owners need to do is enforce those rules and convince the shoppers that they are taking all the precautionary measures. So, it's one thing to take actions, but it's another thing to communicate those actions so that the shoppers will be perceiving elevated risks might realize that, 'Yeah, we're in a safer environment and the shopping mall owners are aware of the risk and taking precautionary measures'."

Following last week's shooting at Castleton Square, mall management issued a statement that its own security personnel, who work alongside off-duty IMPD officers, utilized a K9 officer to help apprehend two suspects and that IMPD would provide stepped-up patrols over the weekend which were in place for the two arrests late Saturday afternoon which resulted in one man being banned from the mall for life.

"I can imagine there will be an erosion of trust, an ongoing erosion of trust," said IU Kelley School Professor John Talbott. "I think there will be groups of individuals to make that decision that, 'I don't feel safe,' and because of that choose to make that purchase online."

Talbott said that while researchers have surveyed consumer attitudes regarding the online retail experience versus in-store shopping, he's unaware of any studies on the impact of perceived safety on store foot traffic.

"Now you have this perception that someone is suffering harm in a shopping center every single day. That's probably too strong," said Talbott. "The incidents of it is still relatively low and I would say truthfully there probably is more danger in parking in a shopping center mall from a statistical probability standpoint but that doesn't change peoples' fear." fox59.com


Lawmakers Grapple Over Who is to Blame for Crime Surge
15 cities saw record homicide numbers in 2021

Op-Ed: This is what soft-on-crime insanity does to American families
Public safety is the foundation of any free society. In the United States, our families deserve to live in safe communities without the constant fear of violent crime and lawlessness threatening their personal security.

Unfortunately, due to soft-on-crime, defund-the-police agendas, too many Americans have been victimized by violent criminals who are allowed to walk free because Democrat prosecutors won't even charge them with a crime.

Crime is skyrocketing in major U.S. cities nationwide because Democrats have defunded their police departments, ended cash bail and allowed violent criminals back on our streets to terrorize communities with no more than a slap on the wrist.

Naturally, these dangerous policies have consequences. More than 15 U.S. cities - including Atlanta, Austin, and St. Paul - saw their 2021 homicide numbers break previous records.

According to the Major Cities Chiefs Association's 2022 crime report, homicides have increased by 41% in Chicago, 45% in Philadelphia, and 236% in Portland since 2019. These alarming statistics should serve as a wake-up call for Democrats to reevaluate their failed agenda. However, in our nation's capital, pro-criminal policies are the extreme left's gold standard.

In Washington, D.C., just this year, sexual abuse is up 100%, motor vehicle theft is up 111%, and homicides have increased by 18%. But, just weeks ago, even despite the liberal mayor's veto, the Washington, D.C. City Council approved legislation to slash prison sentences for the worst offenders, eliminate penalties for a slew of violent crimes, and release scores of dangerous criminals back onto our streets.  foxnews.com


Teens Fueling the Violence Surge?
St. Paul weathers spike in violence among teenagers
City residents wonder what can be done to stop the cycle of youth violence plaguing St. Paul. Although no easy answers seem apparent, some held out hope that a combination of personal action, community activism and political will can make a difference.

"One of the biggest problems is, there's not as many dads in the household," said Bob Cruz, president of the West Side Boosters, an all-volunteer group that provides programming and activities for more than 800 youths. "Your mom can only do so much. If mom's working two jobs, who's watching that baby?"

Cruz set up a table at the rec center Saturday with cookies and orange juice for parents, children and anyone else who wanted to talk about keeping the community safe. The shooters, he said, "weren't West Side kids," but guns don't care who's pointing them.

"We've got to change these gun laws," Cruz said. "It's crazy to me how easy it is to get a gun. You're cool if you get a gun." startribune.com


All U.S. extremist mass killings in 2022 linked to far right, report says
Right-wing extremists committed every ideologically driven mass killing identified in the U.S. in 2022, with an "unusually high" proportion perpetrated by white supremacists, according to a new report

Santa Fe, NM: House leaders signal focus on retail theft

Police warn of alarming crime trend at funerals, car washes

Automation: The Solution to Disrupting Ransomware & BEC?
Microsoft announces automatic BEC, ransomware attack disruption capabilities
Last year, Microsoft announced automatic attack disruption capabilities in Microsoft 365 Defender, its enterprise defense suite. On Wednesday, it announced that these capabilities will now help organizations disrupt two common attack scenarios: BEC (business email compromise) and human-operated ransomware attacks.

Reaction speed is paramount for disrupting attacks

A fast defensive response to initiated cyber attacks is becoming increasingly crucial for organizations: According to IBM Security's X-Force team, the average time to complete a ransomware attack dropped from 2 months down to less than 4 days and the rate at which attackers target employees via compromised email accounts and by exploiting existing email threads has doubled.

In an ideal world, all organizations would have the right technology deployed and a well-staffed security operations center (SOC) capable of spotting the very first signs of an attack in progress. In this imperfect world, though, SOC analysts are few, overworked and burned out, overwhelmed with alerts and wading through a sea of false positives - and often finding crucial clues too late.

The solution, according to many security vendors, is automation. According to Microsoft, it's automation and reaction at machine speed.

BEC and ransomware attack disruption

The signals on which Microsoft 365 Defender takes automated disruption actions are gathered from endpoints, identities, email, collaboration and SaaS apps. They are then aggregated and automatically analyzed and - if a high level of confidence is established - acted upon.

"The intent is to flag the assets that are responsible for the malicious activity," says Eyal Haik, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft.

In the current public preview, the automatic attack disruption capabilities include:

• Suspending the account in Active Directory and Azure AD of the user delivering the attack (if the user has been onboarded to Microsoft Defender for Identity)

• Containing devices to prevent them from communicating with the compromised machine (possible for environments using Defender for Endpoint)  helpnetsecurity.com


Apple Products Exposed to Takeover Attacks
'New Class of Bugs' in Apple Devices Opens the Door to Complete Takeover

With the right kind of exploit, there's hardly any function, app, or bit of data an attacker couldn't access on your Mac, iPad, or iPhone.

A new class of bugs in Apple's iOS, iPadOS, and macOS has been uncovered, researchers say, that could allow an attacker to escalate privileges and make off with everything on a targeted device.

This new class could "allow bypassing code signing to execute arbitrary code in the context of several platform applications," Trellix researcher Austin Emmitt wrote in a blog post on Feb. 21, "leading to escalation of privileges and sandbox escape on both macOS and iOS."

Were an attacker to exploit these vulnerabilities, they could potentially gain access to a victim's photos, messages, call history, location data, and all kinds of other sensitive data, even the device's microphone and camera. They could also use their access to wipe a device altogether.

Patching Might Not Be the End of the Story

If they haven't already, Apple users should update their system software, as the newest versions include fixes for the vulnerabilities so described. That doesn't mean, however, that vulnerabilities of this kind won't pop up again.

Emmitt highlighted in the blog post how NSPredicate had already been exposed by a security researcher back in 2019, then exploited by NSO Group in 2021, in an espionage attack targeting a Saudi activist. Apple attempted to close the hole but evidently didn't finish the job, paving the way for the new discoveries.

"Elimination of a bug class is often extremely difficult to accomplish as it often requires not only code changes but education of developers," explains Doug McKee, director of vulnerability research for Trellix. "Like all bug classes, unless a mitigation is put into place which would eliminate the entire class, it would be expected that more similar vulnerabilities would be found in the future."  darkreading.com


Attackers Continue to Evolve, Even as Defenders are More Successful
Defenders on high alert as backdoor attacks become more common
Although ransomware's share of incidents declined only slightly from 2021 to 2022, defenders were more successful detecting and preventing ransomware, according to IBM.

Despite this, attackers continued to innovate with the report showing the average time to complete a ransomware attack dropped from 2 months down to less than 4 days.

According to the 2023 report, the deployment of backdoors, which allow remote access to systems, emerged as the top action by attackers last year. About 67% of those backdoor cases related to ransomware attempts, where defenders were able to detect the backdoor before ransomware was deployed.

The uptick in backdoor deployments can be partially attributed to their high market value. X-Force observed threat actors selling existing backdoor access for as much as $10,000, compared to stolen credit card data, which can sell for less than $10 today.

"The shift towards detection and response has allowed defenders to disrupt adversaries earlier in the attack chain - tempering ransomware's progression in the short term," said Charles Henderson, Head of IBM Security X-Force. "But it's only a matter of time before today's backdoor problem becomes tomorrow's ransomware crisis. Attackers always find new ways to evade detection. Good defense is no longer enough. To break free from the never-ending rat race with attackers, businesses must drive a proactive, threat-driven security strategy." helpnetsecurity.com


TikTok Ban Hits EU Commission Phones as Cybersecurity Worries Mount
Employees of the EU Commission are no longer allowed to use the TikTok app thanks to concerns over data security.

Canadian Telecom Firm Telus Reportedly Investigating Breach

CISA: Beware of DDoS, Web Defacements on Anniversary of Russia's Ukraine Invasion