Author Archives: Sean Lyngaas

Bug could expose patient data from GE medical imaging devices, researchers warn

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Security researchers have discovered a software vulnerability that could allow an attacker to steal sensitive patient data from X-ray and MRI machines, or more than 100 models of General Electric medical devices. While there is no evidence that hackers have exploited the vulnerability for their own gain, the flaw points to the recurring issue of health care devices sending patient information over insecure channels. In this case, the maintenance software for the GE medical devices used publicly-exposed login credentials, which could allow attackers to execute code on the devices. “The bigger picture here is authentication and it’s a problem that’s unfortunately typical for medical devices,” said Elad Luz, a researcher at CyberMDX, the medical security company that publicly disclosed the vulnerability on Tuesday. Using the vulnerability to steal patient data would require a malicious hacker to first gain access to a health care organization’s computer network. Actually leveraging the bug […]

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Former CISA director Chris Krebs sues Trump campaign, lawyer after death threats

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Chris Krebs, a former U.S. cybersecurity official whom President Donald Trump fired for saying the 2020 election was secure, has sued the Trump campaign, one of its lawyers and the conservative media outlet Newsmax for defamation after the lawyer made violent threats against Krebs. The lawyer, Joe diGenova, said last week in a video on Newsmax that Krebs should be “taken out at dawn and shot” and “drawn and quartered” for contradicting Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud and saying the election was secure. Krebs filed suit in a Maryland court on Tuesday, asking for monetary damages and for Newsmax to remove any recording of the threatening video from its website. The lawsuit cites numerous death threats Krebs has received via text and email since. The filing also accuses Trump and his legal team of carrying out a “pernicious conspiracy” to defame other Republicans who have refuted the president’s claims […]

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Norwegian police implicate Fancy Bear in parliament hack, describe ‘brute forcing’ of email accounts

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Norwegian authorities on Tuesday got more specific in their accusation of Russian involvement in an August cyberattack on Norwegian parliament, implicating the same notorious group of suspected Russian military intelligence hackers accused of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election. Fancy Bear or APT28 — a group of hackers linked with Russia’s GRU military agency — was likely behind the breach, which resulted in the theft of “sensitive content” from some Norwegian lawmakers’ email accounts, Norway’s national police agency said in a statement. The attackers used a common technique called “brute forcing,” which bombards accounts with passwords until one works, to access the Norwegian parliament’s email system, according to the statement signed by Norwegian police attorney Anne Karoline Bakken Staff. The Fancy Bear operatives then tried to move further into parliament’s IT systems, according to the statement, but were unsuccessful. The intrusions were part of a broader suspected Fancy Bear campaign […]

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Dragos raises $110 million from Koch Industries, Saudi Aramco, National Grid investment arms

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Dragos, a Maryland-based industrial cybersecurity company, said Tuesday it raised $110 million, the latest sign that investors are pouring money into securing the critical infrastructure frequently targeted by hackers. The Series C funding round comes courtesy of the investment arms of chemical manufacturing giant Koch Industries; multinational electricity and gas utility National Grid; Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s largest oil companies; and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Once an obscure field for investors, the security of industrial control systems (ICS) — the ruggedized computer systems that help run global factories and power plants — is now prompting some of the world’s richest companies to open their checkbooks. The investment shows that the security of such critical technology “is a large market that is something that the companies out there, the world leaders, really care about,” said Dragos CEO Robert M. Lee. It also shows that major industrial organizations are aware that state-affiliated hackers […]

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Ransomware attack may delay scheduled procedures at Baltimore-area medical center

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The Greater Baltimore Medical Center on Sunday became the latest U.S. hospital to grapple with a ransomware incident amid a raging pandemic that has stretched health care IT resources thin. The ransomware attack caused “many of our [IT] systems” to go down, the 342-bed medical center said in a statement late Sunday. That means some patient procedures scheduled for Monday “may be affected,” GBMC said. The hospital emphasized that it had “robust processes in place to maintain safe and effective patient care.” It was unclear how many patient procedures were affected by the ransomware attack, or what type of malicious software was involved. A GBMC spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. GMBC said no patient data had been “misused,” and that it had enlisted outside security experts and law enforcement to help respond to the incident. The Towson, Maryland-based medical center is following a playbook that numerous hospitals […]

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Ransomware gang Egregor publishes details from HR firm Randstand following hack

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A cybercriminal group breached the IT systems of Randstad, one of the largest head-hunting companies in the world, and published some internal corporate data in an apparent extortion attempt, the firm said Thursday. Netherlands-based Randstad pointed the finger at the criminal gang behind Egregor, a nascent type of ransomware that’s struck multiple organizations in recent weeks. The attackers gained access “to our global IT environment and to certain data, in particular related to our operations in the US, Poland, Italy and France,” Randstad said in a press release. “A limited number of servers were impacted.” Randstad, which employed more than 38,000 people last year and reported more than $28 billion in revenue, said it was still identifying what data had been accessed. Law enforcement and third-party investigators are also involved in the matter, the company said. “We believe the incident started with a phishing email that initiated malicious software to […]

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Kaspersky catches hacker-for-hire group using ‘PowerPepper’ malware

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The hack-for-hire business is thriving. Following the revelation in November that a new mercenary group had targeted organizations in South Asia, researchers on Thursday outlined how another suspected hack-for-hire shop has used malicious code to try to breach organizations in Europe and the Americas. It’s the latest innovation in a bustling market for buying access to government and corporate networks in a range of industries. The new code, uncovered by analysts at security firm Kaspersky, can be used to remotely take over victim devices, and it interacts with the attackers via a communications-concealing protocol. The group responsible for the malware, known theatrically as DeathStalker, has been around for at least eight years but has only drawn public scrutiny in recent months, according to Kaspersky. And researchers have more digging to do. “PowerPepper,” as the new malware is known, “is already the fourth malware strain affiliated with the actor, and we have discovered […]

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COVID-19 hacking extends to supply chain for controlling vaccine temperature, IBM says

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As drug companies turn their attention from the development to the deployment of a coronavirus vaccine, well-resourced hackers are doing the same. IBM researchers on Thursday revealed a global spearphishing campaign they said was aimed at companies involved in the storage and transport of vaccines in temperature-controlled environments. Those controls allow the medicine to be sent to far-flung places. IBM suspects the attackers are tied to a government, but they said they didn’t have enough evidence to determine which one. The attackers’ goal may have been to steal login credentials from those companies in order to gain future access “to corporate networks and sensitive information relating to the COVID-19 vaccine distribution,” the researchers said. It’s unclear how successful the phishing has been. The findings illustrate how virtually every step of the month-long project by drug companies to produce a vaccine has been targeted by hackers. The U.S. government accused Chinese hackers of targeting […]

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China aims its influence operations at incoming Biden administration, top intel official says

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China has increased its influence operations targeting incoming Biden administration personnel and their associates since the presidential election, the top U.S. counterintelligence official said Wednesday. “We’re starting to see that now play [out] across the country, to not only the folks who are in the new administration, but those who are around those folks in the new administration,” William Evanina, who heads the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said at an online event hosted by the Aspen Institute. Evanina did not elaborate on what the Chinese influence activity entailed. But another U.S. intelligence official told CyberScoop it included intelligence collection and efforts to shape U.S. policy. Evanina did say that China had engaged in an “uptick” in influence operations since the Nov. 3 election of Joe Biden that were focused on the president-elect’s advisers. Chinese influence activity in the past has included amplification of state-controlled media outlets and other means of […]

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California man gets 3 years in prison for hacking Nintendo, collecting child pornography

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A 21-year-old California man has been sentenced to three years in prison and seven years of supervised release for a hacking scheme that stole proprietary Nintendo information, and for possessing child pornography. The defendant, Ryan Hernandez, will also have to pay more than $259,000 to remediate damages he allegedly caused Nintendo, U.S. prosecutors in the Western District of Washington announced Tuesday. The sentencing comes four years after Hernandez first got in trouble with the law for alleged hacking. In 2016, as a teenager, Hernandez and an unnamed associate stole login credentials from a Nintendo employee that were used to access files on Nintendo consoles and games, according to prosecutors. FBI agents visited Hernandez and his parents, and Hernandez pledged not to engage in anymore malicious online activity, the Justice Department said in a press release. But Hernandez went on to hack multiple Nintendo servers and steal internal data on popular […]

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