Dow futures higher as investors anticipate first Fed rate cut in a decade - CNBC

U.S. stock index futures were higher Wednesday morning, as market participants braced for the outcome of the Federal Reserve's meeting later in the session.

At around 03:30 a.m. ET, Dow futures rose 70 points, indicating a positive open of more than 66 points. Futures on the S&P and Nasdaq were both slightly higher.

The U.S. central bank is widely expected to cut interest rates for the first time since the financial crisis more than a decade ago. Market expectations point to a quarter-point rate cut.

The Fed is set to deliver its decision at 2:00 p.m. ET, with Chairman Jerome Powell scheduled to hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET.

The projected move from the Fed has supported risk asset prices worldwide in recent days. However, trade war concerns have resurfaced to cap gains.

President Donald Trump said in a series of tweets Tuesday that Beijing is not keeping its promise of buying more U.S. agricultural products, decreasing hope that the world's two largest economies could soon reach a trade deal.

China insists it has bought U.S. agricultural products.

Washington and Beijing agreed to restart trade talks late last month after they fell through in May. The two countries have been engaged in a trade war since last year. In that time, they've slapped tariffs on billions of dollars' worth of each other's goods.

Economic data and earnings

On the data front, ADP payrolls for July will be released at around 08:15 a.m. ET. Employment cost index figures for the second quarter and Chicago Purchasing Manager Index (PMI) data for July will follow slightly later in the session.

In corporate news, General Electric, Occidental Petroleum and Spotify are among the companies scheduled to report their latest quarterly earnings before the opening bell.

Qualcomm, Vale and Sturm Ruger are among those set to post their results after market close.

— CNBC's Fred Imbert contributed to this report.

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https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/31/stock-market-wall-street-poised-for-first-fed-rate-cut-in-a-decade.html

2019-07-31 06:34:04Z
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The Fed is prepared to cut interest rates for the first time in a decade - Fox Business

For the first time since the start of the recession more than a decade ago, the Federal Reserve is poised to cut interest rates in hopes of shielding the 11-year economic expansion from growing global uncertainties.

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The central bank is expected to announce its decision on interest rates Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET.

The gradual decrease in the benchmark federal funds rate — economists anticipate the U.S. central bank to lower it by a modest quarter of a percentage point — will end an era of monetary tightening by policymakers, who have voted nine times since 2015 to raise interest rates, as recently as December.

“The next question is going to be will there be any further cuts after this?” said Josh Wright, the chief economist at iCIMS and a former Fed staffer. “I think certainly these numbers will make it very easy to say one and done. We feel good about it now, and now we need to let this one cut seep through, so you’re going to let that feed through, barring any major developments.”

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The expected cut will likely placate President Trump, who frequently belittles the Fed, and its chairman, Jerome Powell, for raising interest rates too high, too quickly. On Tuesday, ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee’s two-day meeting, Trump reiterated his criticisms, calling on the Fed to make a “large” rate cut.

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“I would like to see a large cut, and I would like to see immediately the quantitative tightening stop,” he told reporters outside of the White House.

But it’s a fairly remarkable shift for what’s typically considered to be a slow-moving regulatory body, reversing years of slow-but-steady tightening. The Fed has not reduced interest rates since 2008, when it essentially dropped rates to zero to cope with the fallout from the financial crisis. At the time, the GDP was at -0.1 percent, and unemployment was at 6 percent.

In the second quarter of 2019, the country expanded by a 2.1 percent annual rate -- a healthy number, albeit slower than the past few years. Unemployment remains historically low at 3.7 percent.

There are some persistent “unusual uncertainties” looming on the horizon, however, Wright said, including the year-long U.S.-China trade war, concerns about softening growth in China and Brexit.

The interbank lending rate, which is currently set to a range between 2.25 percent and 2.50 percent, can affect consumers by lowering, or increasing, borrowing costs; that includes auto loan rates and 30-year-fixed mortgage rates. Even a slightly lower rate for both can save consumers thousands of dollars.

Although the lending rate is the highest level in years, it's low by historical standards. But Fed officials say it's better to cut rates now to prevent a recession than to wait for an economic slowdown.

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2019-07-30 18:25:16Z
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Capital One Data Theft Impacts 106M People - Krebs on Security

Federal prosecutors this week charged a Seattle woman with stealing data from more than 100 million credit applications made with Capital One Financial Corp. Incredibly, much of this breach played out publicly over several months on social media and other open online platforms. What follows is a closer look at the accused, and what this incident may mean for consumers and businesses.

Paige “erratic” Thompson, in an undated photo posted to her Slack channel.

On July 29, FBI agents arrested Paige A. Thompson on suspicion of downloading nearly 30 GB of Capital One credit application data from a rented cloud data server. Capital One said the incident affected approximately 100 million people in the United States and six million in Canada.

That data included approximately 140,000 Social Security numbers and approximately 80,000 bank account numbers on U.S. consumers, and roughly 1 million Social Insurance Numbers (SINs) for Canadian credit card customers.

“Importantly, no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised and over 99 percent of Social Security numbers were not compromised,” Capital One said in a statement posted to its site.

“The largest category of information accessed was information on consumers and small businesses as of the time they applied for one of our credit card products from 2005 through early 2019,” the statement continues. “This information included personal information Capital One routinely collects at the time it receives credit card applications, including names, addresses, zip codes/postal codes, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and self-reported income.”

The FBI says Capital One learned about the theft from a tip sent via email on July 17, which alerted the company that some of its leaked data was being stored out in the open on the software development platform Github. That Github account was for a user named “Netcrave,” which includes the resume and name of one Paige A. Thompson.

The tip that alerted Capital One to its data breach.

The complaint doesn’t explicitly name the cloud hosting provider from which the Capital One credit data was taken, but it does say the accused’s resume states that she worked as a systems engineer at the provider between 2015 and 2016. That resume, available on Gitlab here, reveals Thompson’s most recent employer was Amazon Inc.

Further investigation revealed that Thompson used the nickname “erratic” on Twitter, where she spoke openly over several months about finding huge stores of data intended to be secured on various Amazon instances.

The Twitter user “erratic” posting about tools and processes used to access various Amazon cloud instances.

According to the FBI, Thompson also used a public Meetup group under the same alias, where she invited others to join a Slack channel named “Netcrave Communications.”

KrebsOnSecurity was able to join this open Slack channel Monday evening and review many months of postings apparently made by Erratic about her personal life, interests and online explorations. One of the more interesting posts by Erratic on the Slack channel is a June 27 comment listing various databases she found by hacking into improperly secured Amazon cloud instances.

That posting suggests Erratic may also have located tens of gigabytes of data belonging to other major corporations:

According to Erratic’s posts on Slack, the two items in the list above beginning with “ISRM-WAF” belong to Capital One.

Erratic also posted frequently to Slack about her struggles with gender identity, lack of employment, and persistent suicidal thoughts. In several conversations, Erratic makes references to running a botnet of sorts, although it is unclear how serious those claims were. Specifically, Erratic mentions one botnet involved in cryptojacking, which uses snippets of code installed on Web sites — often surreptitiously — designed to mine cryptocurrencies.

None of Erratic’s postings suggest Thompson sought to profit from selling the data taken from various Amazon cloud instances she was able to access. But it seems likely that at least some of that data could have been obtained by others who may have followed her activities on different social media platforms.

Ray Watson, a cybersecurity researcher at cloud security firm Masergy, said the Capital One incident contains the hallmarks of many other modern data breaches.

“The attacker was a former employee of the web hosting company involved, which is what is often referred to as insider threats,” Watson said. “She allegedly used web application firewall credentials to obtain privilege escalation. Also the use of Tor and an offshore VPN for obfuscation are commonly seen in similar data breaches.”

“The good news, however, is that Capital One Incidence Response was able to move quickly once they were informed of a possible breach via their Responsible Disclosure program, which is something a lot of other companies struggle with,” he continued.

In Capital One’s statement about the breach, company chairman and CEO Richard D. Fairbank said the financial institution fixed the configuration vulnerability that led to the data theft and promptly began working with federal law enforcement.

“Based on our analysis to date, we believe it is unlikely that the information was used for fraud or disseminated by this individual,” Fairbank said. “While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened. I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right.”

Capital One says it will notify affected individuals via a variety of channels, and make free credit monitoring and identity protection available to everyone affected.

Bloomberg reports that in court on Monday, Thompson broke down and laid her head on the defense table during the hearing. She is charged with a single count of computer fraud and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Thompson will be held in custody until her bail hearing, which is set for August 1.

A copy of the complaint against Thompson is available here.

Tags: Capital One breach, GitHub, Masergy, Paige A. Thompson, Ray Watson, Slack, twitter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 30th, 2019 at 9:59 am and is filed under Data Breaches, Ne'er-Do-Well News. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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2019-07-30 16:18:22Z
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Capital One Data Theft Impacts 106M People - Krebs on Security

Federal prosecutors this week charged a Seattle woman with stealing data from more than 100 million credit applications made with Capital One Financial Corp. Incredibly, much of this breach played out publicly over several months on social media and other open online platforms. What follows is a closer look at the accused, and what this incident may mean for consumers and businesses.

Paige “erratic” Thompson, in an undated photo posted to her Slack channel.

On July 29, FBI agents arrested Paige A. Thompson on suspicion of downloading nearly 30 GB of Capital One credit application data from a rented cloud data server. Capital One said the incident affected approximately 100 million people in the United States and six million in Canada.

That data included approximately 140,000 Social Security numbers and approximately 80,000 bank account numbers on U.S. consumers, and roughly 1 million Social Insurance Numbers (SINs) for Canadian credit card customers.

“Importantly, no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised and over 99 percent of Social Security numbers were not compromised,” Capital One said in a statement posted to its site.

“The largest category of information accessed was information on consumers and small businesses as of the time they applied for one of our credit card products from 2005 through early 2019,” the statement continues. “This information included personal information Capital One routinely collects at the time it receives credit card applications, including names, addresses, zip codes/postal codes, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and self-reported income.”

The FBI says Capital One learned about the theft from a tip sent via email on July 17, which alerted the company that some of its leaked data was being stored out in the open on the software development platform Github. That Github account was for a user named “Netcrave,” which includes the resume and name of one Paige A. Thompson.

The tip that alerted Capital One to its data breach.

The complaint doesn’t explicitly name the cloud hosting provider from which the Capital One credit data was taken, but it does say the accused’s resume states that she worked as a systems engineer at the provider between 2015 and 2016. That resume, available on Gitlab here, reveals Thompson’s most recent employer was Amazon Inc.

Further investigation revealed that Thompson used the nickname “erratic” on Twitter, where she spoke openly over several months about finding huge stores of data intended to be secured on various Amazon instances.

The Twitter user “erratic” posting about tools and processes used to access various Amazon cloud instances.

According to the FBI, Thompson also used a public Meetup group under the same alias, where she invited others to join a Slack channel named “Netcrave Communications.”

KrebsOnSecurity was able to join this open Slack channel Monday evening and review many months of postings apparently made by Erratic about her personal life, interests and online explorations. One of the more interesting posts by Erratic on the Slack channel is a June 27 comment listing various databases she found by hacking into improperly secured Amazon cloud instances.

That posting suggests Erratic may also have located tens of gigabytes of data belonging to other major corporations:

According to Erratic’s posts on Slack, the two items in the list above beginning with “ISRM-WAF” belong to Capital One.

Erratic also posted frequently to Slack about her struggles with gender identity, lack of employment, and persistent suicidal thoughts. In several conversations, Erratic makes references to running a botnet of sorts, although it is unclear how serious those claims were. Specifically, Erratic mentions one botnet involved in cryptojacking, which uses snippets of code installed on Web sites — often surreptitiously — designed to mine cryptocurrencies.

None of Erratic’s postings suggest Thompson sought to profit from selling the data taken from various Amazon cloud instances she was able to access. But it seems likely that at least some of that data could have been obtained by others who may have followed her activities on different social media platforms.

Ray Watson, a cybersecurity researcher at cloud security firm Masergy, said the Capital One incident contains the hallmarks of many other modern data breaches.

“The attacker was a former employee of the web hosting company involved, which is what is often referred to as insider threats,” Watson said. “She allegedly used web application firewall credentials to obtain privilege escalation. Also the use of Tor and an offshore VPN for obfuscation are commonly seen in similar data breaches.”

“The good news, however, is that Capital One Incidence Response was able to move quickly once they were informed of a possible breach via their Responsible Disclosure program, which is something a lot of other companies struggle with,” he continued.

In Capital One’s statement about the breach, company chairman and CEO Richard D. Fairbank said the financial institution fixed the configuration vulnerability that led to the data theft and promptly began working with federal law enforcement.

“Based on our analysis to date, we believe it is unlikely that the information was used for fraud or disseminated by this individual,” Fairbank said. “While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened. I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right.”

Capital One says it will notify affected individuals via a variety of channels, and make free credit monitoring and identity protection available to everyone affected.

Bloomberg reports that in court on Monday, Thompson broke down and laid her head on the defense table during the hearing. She is charged with a single count of computer fraud and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Thompson will be held in custody until her bail hearing, which is set for August 1.

A copy of the complaint against Thompson is available here.

Tags: Capital One breach, GitHub, Masergy, Paige A. Thompson, Ray Watson, Slack, twitter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 30th, 2019 at 9:59 am and is filed under Data Breaches, Ne'er-Do-Well News. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/07/capital-one-data-theft-impacts-106m-people/

2019-07-30 15:49:57Z
52780342100097

Capital One Data Theft Impacts 106M People - Krebs on Security

Federal prosecutors this week charged a Seattle woman with stealing data from more than 100 million credit applications made with Capital One Financial Corp. Incredibly, much of this breached played out publicly over several months on social media and other open online platforms. What follows is a closer look at the accused, and what this incident may mean for consumers and businesses.

Paige “erratic” Thompson, in an undated photo posted to her Slack channel.

On July 29, FBI agents arrested Paige A. Thompson on suspicion of downloading nearly 30 GB of Capital One credit application data from a rented cloud data server. Capital One said the incident affected approximately 100 million people in the United States and six million in Canada.

That data included approximately 140,000 Social Security numbers and approximately 80,000 bank account numbers on U.S. consumers, and roughly 1 million Social Insurance Numbers (SINs) for Canadian credit card customers.

“Importantly, no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised and over 99 percent of Social Security numbers were not compromised,” Capital One said in a statement posted to its site.

“The largest category of information accessed was information on consumers and small businesses as of the time they applied for one of our credit card products from 2005 through early 2019,” the statement continues. “This information included personal information Capital One routinely collects at the time it receives credit card applications, including names, addresses, zip codes/postal codes, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and self-reported income.”

The FBI says Capital One learned about the theft from a tip sent via email on July 17, which alerted the company that some of its leaked data was being stored out in the open on the software development platform Github. That Github account was for a user named “Netcrave,” which includes the resume and name of one Paige A. Thompson.

The tip that alerted Capital One to its data breach.

The complaint doesn’t explicitly name the cloud hosting provider from which the Capital One credit data was taken, but it does say the accused’s resume states that she worked as a systems engineer at the provider between 2015 and 2016. That resume, available on Gitlab here, reveals Thompson’s most recent employer was Amazon Inc.

Further investigation revealed that Thompson used the nickname “erratic” on Twitter, where she spoke openly over several months about finding huge stores of data intended to be secured on various Amazon instances.

The Twitter user “erratic” posting about tools and processes used to access various Amazon cloud instances.

According to the FBI, Thompson also used a public Meetup group under the same alias, where she invited others to join a Slack channel named “Netcrave Communications.”

KrebsOnSecurity was able to join this open Slack channel Monday evening and review many months of postings apparently made by Erratic about her personal life, interests and online explorations. One of the more interesting posts by Erratic on the Slack channel is a June 27 comment listing various databases she found by hacking into improperly secured Amazon cloud instances.

That posting suggests Erratic may also have located tens of gigabytes of data belonging to other major corporations:

According to Erratic’s posts on Slack, the two items in the list above beginning with “ISRM-WAF” belong to Capital One.

Erratic also posted frequently to Slack about her struggles with gender identity, lack of employment, and persistent suicidal thoughts. In several conversations, Erratic makes references to running a botnet of sorts, although it is unclear how serious those claims were. Specifically, Erratic mentions one botnet involved in cryptojacking, which uses snippets of code installed on Web sites — often surreptitiously — designed to mine cryptocurrencies.

None of Erratic’s postings suggest Thompson sought to profit from selling the data taken from various Amazon cloud instances she was able to access. But it seems likely that at least some of that data could have been obtained by others who may have followed her activities on different social media platforms.

Ray Watson, a cybersecurity researcher at cloud security firm Masergy, said the Capital One incident contains the hallmarks of many other modern data breaches.

“The attacker was a former employee of the web hosting company involved, which is what is often referred to as insider threats,” Watson said. “She allegedly used web application firewall credentials to obtain privilege escalation. Also the use of Tor and an offshore VPN for obfuscation are commonly seen in similar data breaches.”

“The good news, however, is that Capital One Incidence Response was able to move quickly once they were informed of a possible breach via their Responsible Disclosure program, which is something a lot of other companies struggle with,” he continued.

In Capital One’s statement about the breach, company chairman and CEO Richard D. Fairbank said the financial institution fixed the configuration vulnerability that led to the data theft and promptly began working with federal law enforcement.

“Based on our analysis to date, we believe it is unlikely that the information was used for fraud or disseminated by this individual,” Fairbank said. “While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened. I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right.”

Capital One says it will notify affected individuals via a variety of channels, and make free credit monitoring and identity protection available to everyone affected.

Bloomberg reports that in court on Monday, Thompson broke down and laid her head on the defense table during the hearing. She is charged with a single count of computer fraud and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Thompson will be held in custody until her bail hearing, which is set for August 1.

A copy of the complaint against Thompson is available here.

Tags: Capital One breach, GitHub, Masergy, Paige A. Thompson, Ray Watson, Slack, twitter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 30th, 2019 at 9:59 am and is filed under Data Breaches, Ne'er-Do-Well News. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/07/capital-one-data-theft-impacts-106m-people/

2019-07-30 15:11:15Z
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Trump calls for a 'large' interest rate cut a day before the Fed makes decision - CNBC

President Donald Trump kept up the pressure on the Federal Reserve, calling Tuesday for the central bank to enact a substantial interest rate cut.

The call, made during an exchange with reporters, comes as the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee convenes for its two-day meeting, during which it is widely expected to approve a 25 basis point cut in the central bank's benchmark overnight funds rate.

"I'd like to see a large cut, and I'd like to see quantitative tightening immediately stopped," Trump said, the latter remark a reference to the Fed's efforts to reduce the bonds it is holding on its $3.85 trillion balance sheet.

"They moved in my opinion far too early and far too severely, and puts me at somewhat of a disadvantage," he added.

Trump said he thinks the Fed should have acted sooner to cut and believes the economy would have been better off without the rate hikes that began in December 2015. In total, the Fed increased rates nine times in an effort to normalize monetary policy from the extreme accommodation implemented during and after the financial crisis.

Despite his disapproval of the Fed's actions, Trump said he thinks the economy is strong enough to withstand tighter monetary policy.

"Fortunately, I've made the economy so strong that nothing is going to stop us," he said.

However, he repeated previous assertions that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be 10,000 points higher and GDP growing by 4% had the Fed not tightened.

"I'm very disappointed in the Fed. I think they acted too quickly by far," Trump said.

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https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/30/trump-calls-for-large-interest-rate-cut-a-day-before-fed-to-make-decision.html

2019-07-30 14:01:48Z
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Here are the best Dow stocks to buy on the day Fed cuts rates - CNBC

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on February 6, 2018 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images News | Getty Images

The Federal Reserve is expected to cut rates this week for the first time since 2008, potentially giving investors the green light to play offense. CNBC took a look at stocks that tend to pop on the day the central bank pulls the trigger.

CNBC analysis using Kensho, a hedge fund analytics tool, found the stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average with the highest one-day return when the Fed initially cut rates in each cycle going back to 1990. The first rate reduction in every easing cycle took place in 1995, 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2007. General Electric and DuPont are excluded as they are no longer in the Dow.

The 30-stock index climbed 0.7% on average on rate-cut day as an easier monetary policy is typically bullish for stocks especially cyclicals like industrials. Procter & Gamble takes the cake as the best-performing stock in the Dow on decision day, rising 2.2% on average. Caterpillar and 3M both jumped nearly about 1.9% when the Fed lowered interest rates.

Investors have piled into big dividend payers on rate-cut day as Verizon, Chevron and P&G, all having attractive dividend yields, have done well in the past.

The Fed will announce its latest decision on whether to adjust interest rates at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday. The central bank is widely expected to cut its benchmark lending rate for the first time in more than 10 years. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has signaled his willingness to do what it takes to sustain the record-long expansion.

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https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/30/here-are-the-best-dow-stocks-to-buy-on-the-day-fed-cuts-rates.html

2019-07-30 13:49:11Z
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