Author Archives: Jeff Stone

Denial of service attacks against advocacy groups skyrocket

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Distributed denial-of-service attacks against advocacy organizations increased by 1,120% since a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck, sparking demonstrations throughout the U.S. In figures published Tuesday, the internet security firm Cloudflare said it blocked more than 135 billion malicious web requests against advocacy sites, compared to less than 30 million blocked requests against U.S. government websites, such as police and military organizations. The company did not disclose which websites were affected, specifically. “As we’ve often seen in the past, real world protest and violence is usually accompanied by attacks on the internet. This past week has been no exception,” Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince and chief technology officer John Graham-Cumming said in a blog post. DDoS attacks occur when anonymous web users flood a site with fabricate traffic in an attempt to knock it offline, thus silencing its web presence until the site recovers. Web […]

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CrowdStrike revenue jumps amid work-from-home orders

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CrowdStrike reported a total revenue of $178.1 million during the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, a massive uptick that coincided with ongoing concerns about the strength of the global economy during the coronavirus pandemic. In its quarterly earnings report released Tuesday, the Sunnyvale-based company said its $178.1 million in revenue marked an 85% increase over the $96.1 million during the same period last year. Much of that revenue came from product subscriptions, with executives suggesting that the sudden move to telecommuting boosted CrowdStrike’s presence in the market. The financial disclosure pertains to the period ending on April 30, 2020. Total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2020 was $152.1 million, the company said. “With both security administrators and end-users working from home, we believe the rapid shift to a remote workforce has helped increase our leadership,” chief executive George Kurtz said in a statement. “We achieved 88% [annual recurring […]

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Anonymous, aiming for relevance, spins old data as new hacks

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Anonymous, the once-formidable hacking collective, continued its transformation into a cohort of social media opportunists over the weekend by claiming to “leak” files and personal information that, in some cases, has been available for years. Anonymous said it retaliated against the Minneapolis police department for the May 25th killing of George Floyd by publishing email addresses and passwords apparently stolen from a police website. The information was previously taken in prior data breaches, then re-packaged to appear to be a new batch, according to Troy Hunt, owner of Have I Been Pwned, which tracks stolen credentials. Of the 798 email addresses included in the Anonymous database, 689 are unique, the rest being duplicates. Of that 689, 659 were already available in the Have I Been Pwned database, Hunt said in his analysis, and those email addresses were leaked an average of 5.5 times. Many seem to have originated in the […]

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North Korea issues blanket denial to US hacking accusations

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The North Korean government issued a statement denying U.S. allegations that hackers used cyberattacks to raise money on Pyongyang’s behalf. U.S. and international cybersecurity officials, along with private sector specialists, have accused North Korean hackers of infiltrating global financial networks, stealing from ATMs, and demanding ransoms in bitcoin as part of a wider effort to help the government evade sanctions. The FBI, along with the departments of Homeland Security, Treasury and State, issued an advisory in May warning that North Korean hackers had used an array of malicious software tools to continue their operations. “We know well that the ulterior intention of the United States is to tarnish the image of our state and create a moment for provoking us by employing a new leverage called ‘cyber threat’ together with the issues of nuke, missiles, ‘human rights,’ ‘sponsoring of terrorism’ and ‘money laundering,’” North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said […]

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New York man nabbed for carrying computers with stolen credit card details through JFK, feds say

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A New York City man caught carrying multiple computers containing thousands of stolen credit card numbers has been charged with an array of hacking-related crimes, U.S. prosecutors announced. Vitalii Antonenko was charged in Massachusetts on multiple counts of conspiracy – to commit computer hacking, launder money and traffic in stolen payment card numbers – in connection with a scheme to sell stolen data on cybercriminal markets. The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that Antonenko, 28, was apprehended in March upon his arrival at John F. Kennedy Airport from Ukraine. He was charged Tuesday. Attorneys representing Antonenko did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Antonenko, along with two unidentified co-conspirators, offered stolen data for sale on multiple carding websites dating back to 2012, according to a complaint. Law enforcement officials working undercover on the unnamed website spent more than two years, from June 2015 through September […]

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Judge rules Capital One must hand over Mandiant’s forensic data breach report

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A court has ruled that Capital One must allow plaintiffs to review a cybersecurity firm’s forensic report related to the bank’s 2019 data breach despite the bank’s protests that it is a protected legal document. A judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled Tuesday that attorneys suing Capital One on behalf of customers could review a copy of an incident response report to prepare for a possible trial. The Virginia-based bank had sought to keep the report private on the grounds that it was protected under legal doctrine. Yet U.S. Magistrate Judge John Anderson said the report, prepared by Mandiant, was the result of a business agreement, and that the legal doctrine argument was “unpersuasive.” It’s a significant ruling which effectively affords the attorneys suing Capital One with a breakdown of which bank behaviors were successful, and which failed. It’s common for Fortune 500 […]

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Roberto Escobar, former Medellín Cartel accountant, sues Apple for $2.6 billion: report

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When you’re trying to market a new smartphone product is it more cost-effective to hire a public relations firm, or sue Apple for $2.6 billion? It’s a question that Pablo Escobar’s brother must have asked himself before he filed a suit against Apple, seeking damages for an alleged iPhone security flaw that made it possible for attackers to threaten his safety. Roberto Escobar claims hackers exploited a vulnerability in an iPhone X to uncover his address in FaceTime, then sent him a threatening letter, forcing Escobar to relocate for his own safety and spend money on a security detail. The suit, first reported by TMZ, coincides with Escobar’s efforts to sell a limited-edition gold-plated iPhone 11 for $499, less than Apple’s price, and his launch of “RIP Apple,” a site that he said will include “proof showing how the people of the world were scammed by Apple Inc., buying crap […]

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Email scam aims to drop Dridex on machines by impersonating FedEx, UPS

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As more Americans rely on package deliveries during the coronavirus pandemic, scammers are trying to capitalize on the tracking process by sending spoofed emails containing malicious software. Hackers are sending spoofed emails that appear to be from FedEx, UPS and DHL as part of a mass emailing campaign meant to infect victims’ computers, according to research initially published on May 5 by the security vendor Votiro. The messages appear to include package tracking updates, though at least some of them aim to infect recipients with a strain of malware known as Dridex, which is typically used to steal bank account data. The messages usually ask recipients to download an invoice, or view their tracking information. Code in the images, links and header of the email all appeared to be legitimate, providing the hackers with cover. They also disguised many of the messages to make them appear as if they arrived […]

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Lawsuit seeking billions in damages filed against EasyJet

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Lawyers always seem to recognize a good data breach when they see one. A British law firm, PGMBM, announced Tuesday it filed a lawsuit against EasyJet, the largest airline in the U.K., in connection with a security incident in which details about 9 million people were exposed. The firm is seeking up to £18 billion ($22 billion), including up to 30% in fees, or roughly £5.4 billion ($6.6 billion), for itself. The suit in London’s High Court follows similar legal action against British Airways, which announced its own data breach in 2018. EasyJet said on May 19 that hackers had accessed travel information about up to 9 million people, and credit card details belonging to more than 2,000 people. While it remains unclear exactly when the breach occurred, the BBC first reported that EasyJet had learned of the attack in January, only to disclose it months later. Some customers have […]

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Forescout alleges private equity buyer ‘concocted’ reasons to avoid a deal as pandemic intensified

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If Advent International still intends to acquire the security vendor Forescout, then the companies’ relationship is getting off to an awkward start. Forescout said Wednesday it had filed a complaint against Advent, a Boston-based private equity firm, for allegedly violating the terms of the acquisition. Advent announced in February it would acquire Forescout for roughly $1.9 billion, only to say on Monday it would not complete the deal by the May 18 deadline. The delay coincides with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and a significant increase in the number of deals between security vendors and private equity firms in recent years. Advent blamed a “material adverse effect” for the holdup, a claim that Forescout is disputing. “We have satisfied all conditions to closing under our merger agreement, and a material adverse effect has not occurred,” Theresia Gouw, chair of the Forescout board of directors, said in a statement Wednesday. “The only […]

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