- Demand for cyber threat intel growing, White House official says
April 6, 2022
Private sector companies are increasingly asking the federal government for cyber threat intelligence as they seek to shore up their defenses against growing online threats, a White House cyber official told lawmakers on Wednesday. Robert Knake, a U.S. official in charge of budget and policy at the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director, told ...
- FBI: Ransomware Attacks Straining Local US Governments and Public Services
March 30, 2022
The FBI is informing Government Facilities Sector (GFS) partners of cyber actors conducting ransomware attacks on local government agencies that have resulted in disrupted operational services, risks to public safety, and financial losses. Ransomware attacks against local government entities and the subsequent impacts are especially significant due to the public’s dependency on critical utilities, emergency ...
- Transparent Tribe APT returns to strike India’s government and military
March 29, 2022
The Transparent Tribe hacking group is back with a new malware arsenal and victim list including India’s government and military. Active since at least 2013, the advanced persistent threat (APT) group operates in at least 30 countries. However, the APT tends to focus on India and Afghanistan – with the exception being attacks recorded against human ...
- China APT group using Russia invasion, COVID-19 in phishing attacks
March 28, 2022
A China-based threat group is likely running a month-long campaign using a variant of the Korplug malware and targeting European diplomats, internet service providers (ISPs) and research institutions via phishing lures that refer to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and COVID-19 travel restrictions. The ongoing campaign was first seen in August 2021 and is being tied to ...
- How hackers are trying to undermine Putin
March 20, 2022
The Anonymous hacktivist collective has been bombarding Russia with cyber-attacks since declaring “cyber war” on President Vladimir Putin in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine. Several people operating under its banner spoke to the BBC about their motives, tactics and plans. Of all the cyber-attacks carried out since the Ukraine conflict started, an Anonymous hack on ...
- Israeli government websites down due to suspected cyberattack
March 14, 2022
This is the largest-ever cyberattack carried out against Israel, a defense establishment source says Several Israeli government websites went down on Monday, prompting suspicions of a cyberattack. The websites of the Prime Minister’s Office, as well as several ministries, were inaccessible. Access to some of the websites has been restored. A senior defense official reportedly told Haaretz that ...
- Does This Look Infected? A Summary of APT41 Targeting U.S. State Governments
March 8, 2022
UPDATE: The original post may not have provided full clarity that CVE-2021-44207 (USAHerds) had a patch developed by Acclaim Systems for applicable deployments on or around Nov. 15, 2021. Mandiant cannot speak to the affected builds, deployment, adoption, or other technical factors of this vulnerability patch beyond its availability. In May 2021 Mandiant responded to an APT41 intrusion ...
- US Government sets forth Zero Trust architecture strategy and requirements
February 17, 2022
To help protect the United States from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, the White House issued Executive Order (EO) 14028 on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, which requires US Federal Government organizations to take action to strengthen national cybersecurity.1 Section 3 of EO 14028 specifically calls for federal agencies and their suppliers “to modernize approach to ...
- Ukraine: Websites of some banks and ministries are under a cyberattack
February 15, 2022
According to local media, hackers are now attacking a number of sites in Ukraine. Several banks and the website of the Ministry of Defense are under DDoS attack. “Ukrainska Pravda” citing sources in the Ukrainian government understands that a powerful DDoS attack affected Privatbank and Oschadbank banks, as well as the Ministry of Defense and the ...
- UK Foreign Office target of ‘serious cyber incident’
February 8, 2022
The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) was the target of a “serious cyber-security incident”, it has emerged. The details came via a tender document published on a government website, seemingly by mistake. The BBC understands unidentified hackers got inside the FCDO systems, but were detected. It is not believed that any classified or highly sensitive material ...
- Israel Police Used NSO’s Pegasus Spyware Against Top Gov’t Officials, Journalists and Activists
February 7, 2022
Israel Police used NSO’s Pegasus spyware to hack the phones of public figures, including protest leaders, journalists, government employees and associates of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a report by Calcalist on Monday. According to the report, the hacking tool was used without a court order and against Netanyahu’s son, Avner Netanyahu, co-defendant in ...
- Actinium hacking group is targeting emergency response and security organizations in Ukraine
February 7, 2022
Microsoft has detailed recent hacking activity of cyber actors, most likely aligned with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), who have targeted Ukraine government, security agencies and aid organizations. Microsoft says the hacking group, which it calls Actinium, has “targeted or compromised accounts” at Ukraine emergency response organizations since October. Actinium hackers also targeted organizations that ...
- NSO Group Pegasus Spyware Aims at Finnish Diplomats
January 31, 2022
The controversial Pegasus spyware, developed by NSO Group, has been found on the devices of Finland’s diplomatic corps serving outside the country as part of a wide-ranging espionage campaign, according to Finnish officials. They also said the infections were of the zero-click variety. “The highly sophisticated malware has infected users’ Apple or Android telephones without their noticing ...
- LockBit gang claims it stole data from French Ministry of Justice
January 28, 2022
The French government is investigating claims from the LockBit ransomware gang that data was stolen from the Ministry of Justice. “The French Ministry of Justice is aware of the alert and has immediately taken actions to proceed to the needed verifications, in collaboration with the competent services in this field,” a government spokesperson told ZDNet. The Ministry ...
- Canada’s foreign affairs department hit with cyberattack
January 25, 2022
Canada’s foreign affairs department was hit with a cyberattack last week, according to the Treasury Board of Canada. The hack of Global Affairs Canada, the government entity responsible for diplomatic and global relations, occurred on Wednesday, according to a statement provided by the Treasury Board to ABC News. The statement does not identify who carried out the ...
- Hackers take over diplomat’s email, target Russian deputy minister
January 12, 2022
Hackers believed to work for the North Korean government have compromised the email account of a staff member of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) and deployed spear-phishing attacks against the country’s diplomats in other regions. One of the targets was Sergey Alexeyevich Ryabko, the deputy foreign minister for the Russian Federation, among other things responsible ...
- CISA Issues Emergency Directive Requiring Federal Agencies To Mitigate Apache Log4j Vulnerabilities
December 17, 2021
WASHINGTON – The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued Emergency Directive (ED) 22-02 today requiring federal civilian departments and agencies to assess their internet-facing network assets for the Apache Log4j vulnerabilities and immediately patch these systems or implement other appropriate mitigation measures. This Directive will be updated to further drive additional mitigation actions. The directive is in response to the active exploitation by multiple threat actors of vulnerabilities found in the widely used Java-based ...
- Collecting In the Dark: Tropic Trooper Targets Transportation and Government
December 14, 2021
Earth Centaur, previously known as Tropic Trooper, is a long-running cyberespionage threat group that has been active since 2011. In July 2020, Trend Micro researchers noticed interesting activity coming from the group, and they have been closely monitoring it since. The actors seem to be targeting organizations in the transportation industry and government agencies related ...
- NICKEL targeting government organizations across Latin America and Europe
December 6, 2021
The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) has observed NICKEL, a China-based threat actor, targeting governments, diplomatic entities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America. MSTIC has been tracking NICKEL since 2016 and observed some common activity with other actors known in the security community as APT15, APT25, ...
- UK government transport website caught showing porn
November 25, 2021
A UK Department for Transport (DfT) website was caught serving porn earlier today. The particular DfT subdomain behind the mishap, on most days, provides vital DfT statistics for the public and the department’s business plan. Racy traffic ahead The UK DfT’s charts.dft.gov.uk website was seen serving porn today, as confirmed by BleepingComputer. Read more… Source: Bleeping Computer