LockBit gang claims it stole data from French Ministry of Justice

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 Read More …

Hackers take over diplomat’s email, target Russian deputy minister

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 Read More …

CISA Issues Emergency Directive Requiring Federal Agencies To Mitigate Apache Log4j Vulnerabilities

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 Read More …

Collecting In the Dark: Tropic Trooper Targets Transportation and Government

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. Read More …

NICKEL targeting government organizations across Latin America and Europe

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 Read More …

UK government transport website caught showing porn

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 Read More …

North Korean cyberspies target govt officials with custom malware

A state-sponsored North Korean threat actor tracked as TA406 was recently observed deploying custom info-stealing malware in espionage campaigns. The particular actor is attributed as one of several groups known as Kimsuky (aka Thallium). TA406 has left traces of low-volume Read More …

Philippines gov takes down passport application website amid privacy leak fears

The Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has disabled its online passport application tracker, citing a “data privacy issue” and hinting that information could have leaked. “The DFA’s IT Unit is currently investigating the circumstances surrounding this issue and is Read More …

CISA Binding Operational Directive 22-01 – Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities

A binding operational directive is a compulsory direction to federal, executive branch, departments and agencies for purposes of safeguarding federal information and information systems. Section 3553(b)(2) of title 44, U.S. Code, authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Read More …