The U.S. sanctioned a Chinese cybersecurity company and one of its employees for exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Sophos firewalls to target U.S. organizations.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury Department said Guan Tianfeng, an employee of Sichuan Silence, used the vulnerability to compromise approximately 81,000 firewalls in April 2020. The hacking campaign, detailed by Sophos in November, led to the compromise of more than 23,000 firewalls in the U.S., dozens of which were used at a government agency, and critical infrastructure companies. One of these was an energy company involved in drilling operations. The Treasury noted that the incident could have caused “significant loss in human life” if the attack had been successful.
Read more…
Source: TechCrunch
Related:
- Spyware maker Paragon confirms US government is a customer
February 4, 2025
Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions confirmed to TechCrunch that it sells its products to the U.S. government and other unspecified allied countries. Paragon’s executive chairman John Fleming said in a statement to TechCrunch on Tuesday that “Paragon licenses its technology to a select group of global democracies — principally, the United States and its allies.” Fleming ...
- Deloitte to provide Rhode Island $5 million toward data breach aftermath expense
February 4, 2025
Deloitte will provide Rhode Island with $5 million to go toward paying expenses related to the RIBridges data breach that took place in December of 2024. Separately, Deloitte will also cover the cost of the data breach call center, credit monitoring for affected Rhode Islanders and identity protection, according to a statement from Rhode Island Governor ...
- Gov. Abbott looks to combat cyber attacks with Texas Cyber Command
February 3, 2025
Gov. Greg Abbott announced plans to create a Texas Cyber Command to be headquartered in San Antonio during his annual State of the State address Sunday evening. The Texas Cyber Command would create a strategy for the state to address cyber security concerns. Abbott said in his address Sunday that with increases in cyber attacks nationwide, ...
- USAID security leaders removed after refusing Elon Musk’s DOGE employees access to secure systems
February 2, 2025
The U.S. Agency for International Development’s director of security and his deputy were placed on administrative leave Saturday after they tried to prevent employees from the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing secure USAID systems, five sources familiar with the events told NBC News. The USAID systems the DOGE team tried to access included personnel files ...
- DeepSeek has rattled the AI industry. Here’s a quick look at other Chinese AI models
January 28, 2025
The Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek has rattled markets with claims that its latest AI model, R1, performs on a par with those of OpenAI, despite using less advanced computer chips and consuming less energy. DeepSeek’s emergence has raised concerns that China may have overtaken the U.S. in the artificial intelligence race despite restrictions on its ...
- FBI Agents’ Call And Text Logs Potentially Stolen In Data Breach
January 23, 2025
The FBI has raised alarm that hackers who breached AT&T’s system last year may have stolen months of agents’ call and text logs, which could potentially lead to the identities of anonymous informants connected to investigations. While the hackers did not access the content of conversations, the stolen call log metadata—records of who called whom, when ...