Author Archives: Patrick Howell O'Neill

Report: John Kelly’s personal phone was compromised for months

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White House chief of staff John Kelly’s personal phone was compromised for months, according to a new report from Politico. The compromise, which may extend as far back as Dec. 2016, left his cell phone not working properly for months. He failed to report the malfunctions until last month. A White House official told Politico Kelly used his government-issued phone for “most communications” since he joined the Trump administration, meaning it’s possible that some government work was conducted on a compromised phone. In March, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter to Kelly about the dangers of cell phone hacking. News about Kelly’s phone being compromised follows months of headlines about President Trump using an off-the-shelf phone susceptible to hacking. Trump carried out government business, including phone calls with other heads of state on his phone. “First, there is the obvious risk of unencrypted calls, mobile messaging and Web browsing being intercepted and logged […]

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In-progress email threads were hacked to spearphish private companies, report says

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A newly identified spearphishing campaign targeting banks, companies and individuals across Eurasia wielded particularly effective tactics and malware, according to new research published by the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks. The ongoing campaign has several eyebrow-raising but ultimately inconclusive links to previous attacks that could be the work of North Korean hackers, the researchers say. Attackers in a campaign dubbed “FreeMilk” compromised email accounts tied to a legitimate domain and then hijacked already ongoing conversations in order to send spearphishing messages to targets, the researchers say. The targeted victims include a Middle Eastern bank, European trademark and intellectual property service companies and specific but unidentified individuals connected to a country in “North East Asia.” Palo Alto Networks declined to share more information. Hijacking ongoing conversations makes identifying spearphishing more difficult. People are trained to look out for unfamiliar email addresses and unsolicited emails as red alarms for phishing but just another reply in an already existent […]

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Report: Russian hackers stole NSA data with help from Kaspersky products

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Russian state-backed hackers stole tools used by the National Security Agency from a contractor’s personal computer after he put the tools on a personal computer, the Wall Street Journal reports. The theft, which took place in 2015 and was discovered in 2016, was reportedly enabled after the hackers identified code using Kaspersky Lab antivirus software. The Moscow-based cybersecurity firm has been under intense scrutiny of late, including a Department of Homeland Security order banning the company’s products from being used on most federal government machines. In the lead up to the story’s publication on Wednesday, CEO Eugene Kaspersky took to Twitter to call the upcoming report a “conspiracy theory” and criticized that it relied on “anonymous sources.” “Note we make no apologies for being aggressive in the battle against cyberthreats,” he tweeted. A Kaspersky spokesperson told CyberScoop that the company “has not been provided any evidence substantiating the company’s involvement in […]

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Keybase launches end-to-end encrypted git

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Keybase is quickly becoming the free and open source way to do anything on a computer with the added benefit of encryption. Two years after nabbing a $10.8 million investment, the tool announced “encrypted git” software designed to create end-to-end encrypted file repositories for individuals and teams. Last month, the company announced Keybase Teams as an encrypted competitor to Slack. That follows Keybase Chat, introduced earlier this year, designed to bring encrypted messaging across social networks. “It is end-to-end encrypted,” the team wrote in a blog post. “It’s hosted, like, say, GitHub, but only you (and teammates) can decrypt any of it. To Keybase, all is but a garbled mess. To you, it’s a regular checkout with no extra steps. Even your repository names and branch names are encrypted, and thus unreadable by Keybase staff or infiltrators. We think this is better than paying a fee to store it in plaintext. Remember, it is impossible to delete […]

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All 3 billion of Yahoo’s users were impacted by 2013 hack

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Every single one of Yahoo’s 3 billion users was impacted by a data breach in 2013, despite the company previously saying only 1 billion accounts were impacted, illustrating that the company is still wrestling with the full scope and details of the enormous breach. The company, now part of Verizon’s Oath, disclosed the information in a quiet update to its account security update page. “Based on an analysis of the information with the assistance of outside forensic experts, Yahoo has determined that all accounts that existed at the time of the August 2013 theft were likely affected,” Yahoo’s page reads. The new conclusion comes based on “recently obtained new intelligence,” according to a statement from the company. “While this is not a new security issue, Yahoo is sending email notifications to the additional affected user accounts. The investigation indicates that the user account information that was stolen did not include passwords in […]

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Valued at $1 billion, ForeScout files for IPO

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The network security firm ForeScout filed for an IPO on Monday after nearly two years of speculation and reporting that the company, valued at $1 billion, would do just that. Details of the IPO, including the exact date, remain undetermined. The company submitted its S-1 form with the SEC on Monday. The company will be listed on NASDAQ as FSCT. F ForeScout targeted a $100 million goal for the IPO in the SEC filing. Based in San Jose, the company sells network visibility, control and security products to government and enterprise customers. Revenue hit $166.8 million in 2016, a 32 percent jump from the previous year. Gaining full visibility and control of a big network is a foundational challenge for enterprises today who face not just a fast-evolving set of threats but also a whirlwind of devices that make knowing and controlling an entire network a massive challenge. Companies like Illumio, another $1 billion […]

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Spanish court will extradite Russian cybercriminal suspect to U.S.

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Spain will extradite Russian citizen and accused hacker Peter Levashov to the United States, where he is charged with operating one of the world’s largest botnets, Kelihos. On Tuesday, Spain’s high court decided to grant the American request and send Levashov, 36, to the U.S. after he was arrested in Barcelona while on vacation. Operating with over 10,000 enslaved computers, the Kelihos botnet was online from 2010. The U.S. charges that the botnet’s consequences include mass password theft, spreading of malware, millions of spam emails and schemes to illegally profit off stocks in pump-and-dump schemes. From 5 percent to 10 percent of Kelihos victims reside in the United States, according to the Justice Department. “The ability of botnets like Kelihos to be weaponized quickly for vast and varied types of harms is a dangerous and deep threat to all Americans, driving at the core of how we communicate, network, earn a living and live our everyday […]

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Voting machine manufacturers pushed for cybersecurity information by Sen. Wyden

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Sen. Ron Wyden continued his cybersecurity push on Tuesday, demanding information about security practices and independent audits from six of the largest voting machine vendors in the U.S. and two federal test laboratories. “As our election systems have come under unprecedented scrutiny, public faith in our electoral process at every level is more important than ever before,” the Oregon Democrat wrote to the companies and the labs, a day after urging the U.S. Supreme Court to improve its email encryption. “Ensuring that Americans can trust that election systems and infrastructure are secure is necessary to protecting confidence in our electoral process and democratic government,” he wrote. Wyden contacted Dominion Voting, Election Systems & Software, Five Cedars Group, Hart InterCivic, MicroVote and Unisyn Voting Solutions. The Department of Homeland Security assessed that Russian hackers targeted state election systems but several states dispute that claim. The hacking did not involve vote tallying, […]

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Equifax: 2.5 million more individuals impacted by hack, total rises to 145.5 million

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More than 2 million more customers may be impacted by the Equifax data breach than the company’s original estimate of 143 million individuals, according to a statement from the company. The uncovered 2.5 million people brings the total number affected to 145.5 million. The news came as Equifax said the forensic investigation of the incident, conducted by the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, concluded on Sunday. There is no evidence attackers accessed databases outside of the United States, the company said in a release on Monday, but thousands of international customers’ data was accessed. Regulators in the United Kingdom are currently being briefed on the scope of the impact in that country. “I was advised Sunday that the analysis of the number of consumers potentially impacted by the cybersecurity incident has been completed, and I directed that the results be promptly released,” newly appointed interim CEO, Paulino do Rego Barros, Jr. said […]

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Wyden pushes Supreme Court to adopt email encryption standards that it currently doesn’t use

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Warning that the U.S. Supreme Court’s emails “remain needlessly exposed to surveillance and potentially compromised by third parties,” Sen. Ron Wyden urged change Monday within the judicial branch and continued his office’s public campaign to bolster information security within the federal government. Wyden, D-Ore,, published a letter to the U.S. Supreme Court urging their director of information technology to adopt STARTTLS encryption “to better protect the privacy and security of the Court’s email communications.” Pointing to wide adoption of STARTTLS in private industry and across government, Wyden pushed the Supreme Court to use the technology because without it “email messages sent to and from the Supreme Court remain needlessly exposed to surveillance and potentially compromised by third parties.” The letter echoes another sent by Wyden earlier this year urging the Defense Information Systems Agency to implement STARTTLS in their email systems. “Major technology companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple […]

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