Author Archives: Chris Bing

Russian hackers targeted 21 states before 2016 election, FBI still investigating

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Government officials from the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigations said Wednesday that election officials and systems in a total of 21 states were targeted by Russian hackers in the months preceding the 2016 presidential election. “We have evidence of election-related systems in 21 states that were targeted,” said Jeanette Manfra, acting deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity and communications at the DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate. The disclosure was made for the first time during a hearing held by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence focused on Russian interference in the U.S. election. Manfra did not name the individual states which were targeted and also did not further explain the contextual definition of “targeted” in this context. She also did not say how many of the targeted states were ultimately hacked and if, for example, any data was exfiltrated in these select incidents. The “owners” of targeted […]

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EU countries agree to collectively punish attacker when a member is hacked

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The European Union’s 28-nation bloc is in agreement concerning how to punish hackers. On Monday, the European Council announced a joint framework, dubbed the “cyber diplomacy toolbox,” to guide how member countries should uniformly respond to malicious cyber activity, which includes steps to cooperatively impose economic sanctions, travel bans, asset freezes and blanket bans against responsible parties. “The key principle here is proportionality,” an EU official told CyberScoop. “It is EU member states who would decide what measure should be used depending on the case they would face … This work aims to promote enhanced shared situational awareness, information sharing and efficient decision-making, and should see the development of a procedure for the attribution of cyber attacks in the context of the cyber diplomacy toolbox.” Use of the “toolbox” is voluntary in nature and any collective response would require unanimous EU member support. In short, the framework represents an ambitious […]

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Hackers are gaming the media to extort breached casinos in Canada, researchers say

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A newly identified hacking group is responsible for breaking into multiple Canadian casinos and mining companies in recent years, exfiltrating sensitive data, posting it online and using media to gain attention to extort victims, according to research conducted by FireEye. Dubbed “FIN10,” the group’s techniques aren’t considered unique or sophisticated. FIN10 has relied on a suite of mostly open source tools and phishing emails to effectively compromise a targeted company, move laterally across their network and gain administrator-level access in order to steal information. After an intrusion, the group will typically seek out breach victims, like company executives and employees, to make their demands heard; threatening to leak sensitive material if they aren’t paid. What sets FIN10 apart from other cyber threat actors is how they behave after stealing sensitive information, which includes reaching out to specific cybersecurity-focused reporters to cover their theft, thereby putting pressure on extortion targets. The […]

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Former CIA Director calls on public to demand cybersecurity legislation

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Former CIA Director John Brennan is urging Americans to encourage federal lawmakers to push forward cybersecurity-focused legislation, regulations and other rules so that the U.S. is better prepared in cyberspace. “You all need to continue to put the pressure on your elected representatives in Congress to take this matter seriously,” Brennan said Wednesday during a speech at the Gartner Risk and Security Summit. “People frequently say it’s going to take a 9/11 in the cyber realm in order for us as a country to be able to come to terms and deal more effectively with cyber challenges.” “A lot of work needs to be done in the halls of Congress, as well as in the executive branch, in order to allow the government to deal with the challenges of the 21st century,” he said. Brennan, who served during the Obama administration and was responsible for standing up a new wing of the […]

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Experts warn Congress of the return of Chinese IP theft

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Hackers working for the Chinese government again appear to be conducting economic espionage against private U.S. companies and other American organizations, experts told lawmakers Tuesday during an open Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing. Cybersecurity experts have stated that Chinese cyber espionage operations — hacking activities aimed at stealing trade secrets, intellectual property or other confidential business information — has substantially declined in the wake of an agreement struck between former President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in September 2015. But at least “anecdotally,” there has been a re-emergence of related economic espionage by Chinese hackers aimed at U.S. entities, according to Samantha Ravich, a current senior adviser to D.C.-based think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Over the last year, the FDD has established a team to study what it defines as “economic warfare.” “It seems there was a dip at first but the anecdotes that are […]

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Why the U.S. is struggling with their digital war on ISIS

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The U.S. military’s reported inability to effectively “drop cyber bombs” on the Islamic State is raising new questions about the military’s existing “cyber weapons arsenal,” a loosely defined collage of digital warfare capabilities shrouded in secrecy. Computer network attacks have been conducted by operators within the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s top cyber warfare unit, under the order of Joint Task Force Ares. While the two organizations are inherently aligned, the NSA and Cyber Command follow different missions and employ different capabilities. Very little is publicly known about either the intelligence community or U.S. military’s ability to conduct offensive cyber operations; the subject matter is generally considered classified if not highly sensitive. A leaked CIA document published by WikiLeaks in March and identified by CyberScoop provides a rare window into how analysts conduct cyber warfare operations; describing one instance in which an operator worked to remotely disrupt a […]

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Researchers find cyberweapon capable of knocking out electric grids

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A newly discovered malware framework, which some believe carries signs of Russian authorship, can be used by hackers to disrupt industrial control systems and cause mass power outages, according to research conducted by cybersecurity firms Dragos Inc. and ESET. The findings are significant because they represent the first known real-world case of a computer virus designed to directly interact with electric grid hardware, explained Sergio Caltagirone, director of threat intelligence for Dragos. Researchers believe that a version of the malware framework, dubbed “CrashOverride” or “Industroyer,” was previously leveraged to hack into an electric transmission station in Ukraine causing a black out for several hours last December in neighborhoods just north of Kiev. Evidence of a connection between CrashOverride’s author and the attackers behind last year’s Ukrainian power grid incident exists, according to Caltagirone, but was not published in Dragos’ technical analysis. In January, iSight Partners, a subsidiary of U.S. cybersecurity […]

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Researchers find cyberweapon capable of knocking out electric grids

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A newly discovered malware framework, which some believe carries signs of Russian authorship, can be used by hackers to disrupt industrial control systems and cause mass power outages, according to research conducted by cybersecurity firms Dragos Inc. and ESET. The findings are significant because they represent the first known real-world case of a computer virus designed to directly interact with electric grid hardware, explained Sergio Caltagirone, director of threat intelligence for Dragos. Researchers believe that a version of the malware framework, dubbed “CrashOverride” or “Industroyer,” was previously leveraged to hack into an electric transmission station in Ukraine causing a black out for several hours last December in neighborhoods just north of Kiev. Evidence of a connection between CrashOverride’s author and the attackers behind last year’s Ukrainian power grid incident exists, according to Caltagirone, but was not published in Dragos’ technical analysis. In January, iSight Partners, a subsidiary of U.S. cybersecurity […]

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Government’s software vulnerability repository is slow to add new cyberthreats, report says

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There is a median lag time of approximately seven days between when someone discovers an exploitable software vulnerability and its eventual release on the National Vulnerability Database, or NVD, according to research conducted by U.S. cybersecurity and dark web intelligence firm Recorded Future. The NVD, a public repository managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that contains data on known vulnerabilities, is one of the preeminent disclosure platforms for information about software flaws that can be exploited by hackers. Private companies and the government share access to it. Recorded Future cautioned companies and agencies against relying on it as the fastest way to learn about new risks to their network infrastructure, products, digital services and other business processes. “While it’s tempting to think of the National Vulnerability Database as the central source for vulnerability information, the reality is that there is a vast amount of content about vulnerabilities already published prior to […]

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APT28 targeted Montenegro’s government before it joined NATO, researchers say

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As Montenegro preprepared to join NATO amid growing tensions in the region driven by Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, a hacking group linked to Russian intelligence was actively engaged in a cyber-espionage campaign against Montenegrin government officials, according to U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye. The findings underscore Russia’s ongoing efforts to impact the political process in foreign countries through the use of a hacking group better known as APT28 or Fancy Bear. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence produced an unclassified report in January linking APT28 to the Russian government. Analyst Ben Read told CyberScoop that FireEye had found two different malicious Microsoft Word document attachments between January and February that carried signs of APT28 authorship and were specifically designed to be combined with phishing emails sent to the Montenegro government. The titles of the weaponized documents described a “schedule for a european military transfer program” and the “schedule for […]

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