- Suspected Russian hackers spied on U.S. Treasury emails – sources
December 13, 2020
Hackers believed to be working for Russia have been monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, according to people familiar with the matter, adding they feared the hacks uncovered so far may be the tip of the iceberg. The hack is so serious it led to a National Security Council meeting at ...
- Chinese APT suspected of supply chain attack on Mongolian government agencies
December 10, 2020
A Chinese state-sponsored hacking group, also known as an APT, is suspected of having breached a Mongolian software company and compromised a chat app used by hundreds of Mongolian government agencies. The attack is believed to have taken place earlier this year, in June, according to a report published today by Slovak security firm ESET. The hackers ...
- Norway: Russian APT28 state hackers likely behind Parliament attack
December 9, 2020
Russian-backed hacking group APT28 has likely brute-forced multiple Norwegian Parliament (Stortinget) email accounts on August 24, 2020, according to the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST, short for Politiets Sikkerhetstjeneste). Attackers gained access to a limited number of Stortinget email accounts of representatives and employees as disclosed by Stortinget director Marianne Andreassen. A statement published on the parliament’s ...
- Kazakhstan government is intercepting HTTPS traffic in its capital
December 6, 2020
Under the guise of a “cybersecurity exercise,” the Kazakhstan government is forcing citizens in its capital of Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana) to install a digital certificate on their devices if they want to access foreign internet services. Once installed, the certificate would allow the government to intercept all HTTPS traffic made from users’ devices via a technique ...
- Digitally Signed Bandook Trojan Reemerges in Global Spy Campaign
November 30, 2020
A wave of targeted cyberattack campaigns bent on espionage is cresting around the globe, using a strain of a 13-year old backdoor trojan named Bandook. According to Check Point Research, Bandook was last spotted being used in 2015 and 2017/2018, in the “Operation Manul” and “Dark Caracal” campaigns, respectively. The malware then all but disappeared from ...
- Adventures in MQTT Part II: Identifying MQTT Brokers in the Wild
November 18, 2020
The use of publicly accessible MQTT brokers is prevalent across numerous verticals and technology fields. I was able to identify systems related to energy production, hospitality, finance, healthcare, pharmaceutical manufacturing, building management, surveillance, workplace safety, vehicle fleet management, shipping, construction, natural resource management, agriculture, smart homes and far more. Hackers have been sounding alarms about this ...
- FBI: Hackers stole source code from US government agencies and private companies
November 7, 2020
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has sent out a security alert warning that threat actors are abusing misconfigured SonarQube applications to access and steal source code repositories from US government agencies and private businesses. Intrusions have taken place since at least April 2020, the FBI said in an alert sent out last month and made public ...
- When Threat Actors Fly Under the Radar: Vatet, PyXie and Defray777
November 6, 2020
As security practitioners, Palo Alto Unit 42 researchers spend a lot of time focusing on the threat actors and malware families that leverage the most impactful exploits or affect the highest number of victims. But what happens when a threat actor goes “low and slow” to fly under the radar? One could argue that, in ...
- Abandoned Hunter Biden’s laptop contained phone numbers for the Clintons, Secret Service officers and most of the Obama cabinet
November 1, 2020
The son of the man expected by many to be America’s next President abandoned a laptop containing a treasure trove of top-secret material, including his father’s private emails and mobile phone numbers, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. In an astonishing lapse, Hunter Biden chose to protect his MacBook Pro computer – crammed with what an ...
- FBI: Hackers stole government source code via SonarQube instances
October 27, 2020
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a flash alert warning of hackers stealing data from U.S. government agencies and enterprise organizations via internet-exposed and insecure SonarQube instances. SonarQube is an open-source platform for automated code quality auditing and static analysis to discover bugs and security vulnerabilities in projects using 27 programming languages. Vulnerable SonarQube servers have ...
- EU sanctions Russian hackers over 2015 German parliament attack
October 22, 2020
The Council of the European Union today announced sanctions imposed on Russian military intelligence officers part of the 85th Main Centre for Special Services (GTsSS) for their involvement in a 2015 hack of the German Federal Parliament (Deutscher Bundestag). EU’s sanctions include both travel bans and asset freezes and also block EU organizations and individuals from ...
- Russian state hackers stole data from US government networks
October 22, 2020
DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI today warned that a Russian state-sponsored APT threat group known as Energetic Bear has hacked and stolen data from US government networks during the last two months. Energetic Bear (also tracked as Berserk Bear, TeamSpy, Dragonfly, Havex, Crouching Yeti, and Koala), a hacking group active since ...
- Hacker groups chain VPN and Windows bugs to attack US government networks
October 12, 2020
Hackers have gained access to government networks by combining VPN and Windows bugs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a joint security alert published on Friday. Attacks have targeted federal and state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) government networks. Attacks against non-government networks have also been ...
- BAHAMUT Spies-for-Hire Linked to Extensive Nation-State Activity
October 7, 2020
A cyberespionage group known as BAHAMUT has been linked to a “staggering” number of ongoing attacks against government officials and private-sector VIPs in the Middle East and South Asia, while also engaging in wide-ranging disinformation campaigns. That’s according to BlackBerry researchers, who said that the highly resourced group is probably operating on a mercenary basis, offering ...
- Government software provider Tyler Technologies hit by ransomware
September 23, 2020
Leading government technology services provider Tyler Technologies has suffered a ransomware attack that has disrupted its operations. Tyler Technologies is one of the largest U.S. software development and technology services companies dedicated to the public sector. With a forecasted $1.2 billion in revenue for 2020 and 5,500 employees, Tyler Technologies provides technical services for local governments in ...
- CISA warns of notable increase in LokiBot malware
September 22, 2020
The US government’s cyber-security agency has issued a security advisory today warning federal agencies and the private sector about “a notable increase in the use of LokiBot malware by malicious cyber actors since July 2020.” The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said that its in-house security platform (the EINSTEIN Intrusion Detection System) has detected persistent ...
- Russian hackers use fake NATO training docs to breach govt networks
September 22, 2020
A Russian hacker group known by names, APT28, Fancy Bear, Sofacy, Sednit, and STRONTIUM, is behind a targeted attack campaign aimed at government bodies. The group delivered a hard-to-detect strand of Zebrocy Delphi malware under the pretense of providing NATO training materials. Researchers further inspected the files containing the payload and discovered these impersonated JPG files showing ...
- US govt orders federal agencies to patch dangerous Zerologon bug by Monday
September 20, 2020
The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division has ordered federal civilian agencies to install a security patch for Windows Servers, citing “unacceptable risk” posed by the vulnerability to federal networks. The DHS order was issued via an emergency directive, a rarely-used legal mechanism through which US government officials can force federal agencies into taking various actions. The ...
- U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs data breach affects 46,000 veterans
September 15, 2020
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has suffered a data breach that has led to the exposure of personal information for over 46,000 veterans. The VA department was created to ensure United States veterans receive the health services, benefits, and care they deserve. In a data breach notification released yesterday, the VA states that hackers breached ...
- Australia: Data of 186,000 customers leaked in Service NSW cyber attack
September 7, 2020
Service NSW has confirmed that the personal data of 186,000 customers and staff were leaked after a cyber attack earlier this year, in which 47 employees had their email accounts compromised. A four-month investigation, which began in April, concluded that roughly 3.8 million documents had to be analysed to assess the severity of any possible breaches. “This ...