Author Archives: Sean Lyngaas

Spies hacked Azerbaijan government officials as Nagorno-Karabakh conflict escalated

Posted on by

More than 200 people have died in clashes between ethnic Armenian separatists and Azerbaijani government forces over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the last 10 days. It’s the worst outbreak of violence related to Nagorno-Karabakh since Armenia and Azerbaijan, two former Soviet republics, fought a war over the enclave in the 1990s. And this time, hacking has come with the fighting. Unidentified spies have in recent weeks been quietly breaching Azerbaijani government IT networks and accessing the diplomatic passports of certain officials, according to new research from Talos, Cisco’s threat intelligence unit. The Talos data shows how digital espionage often coincides with bursts of violence in modern war. Days after Azerbaijan’s president made a call to mobilize reserve soldiers, the hackers used a fake Azerbaijani government document on the same subject as bait. The malicious code embedded in the document can exfiltrate data from a compromised computer and gives the […]

The post Spies hacked Azerbaijan government officials as Nagorno-Karabakh conflict escalated appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Spies hacked Azerbaijan government officials as Nagorno-Karabakh conflict escalated→

Breach at food delivery service Chowbus reportedly affects hundreds of thousands of customers

Posted on by

Two months after securing a $33 million funding round from investors, food delivery startup Chowbus is grappling with a breach that observers say exposed personal data on hundreds of thousands of customers. Customers reported receiving an email on Monday from Chowbus containing reams of customer data, including names, phone numbers and mailing and email addresses. The file is said to contain more than 800,000 rows. Got an email from @ChowbusOfficial support with a link to their full user data dump. Columns include email, full name, and full address. File has ~800000 rows. — Johnny Wang (@Johnny___Wang) October 5, 2020 The incident is a blow for a budding company that had recently attracted funding from Silicon Valley and New York venture firms alike. Founded four years ago in Chicago, Chowbus touts its app’s ability to connect diners with authentic and undiscovered Asian restaurants. In an email to customers, Chowbus CEO Linxin […]

The post Breach at food delivery service Chowbus reportedly affects hundreds of thousands of customers appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Breach at food delivery service Chowbus reportedly affects hundreds of thousands of customers→

Rare case of UEFI hacking hit targets interested in North Korea, Kaspersky says

Posted on by

Spies have long coveted the ability to compromise a computer’s booting process and, with it, the ability to control just about every part of the machine. The booting process — how a computer powers on — offers access to the machine’s operating system and all of the accompanying sensitive data. The crucial computing code that manages that booting process, known as UEFI firmware, represents a valuable target for hackers, though also one that remains difficult to infiltrate. Researchers from security company Kaspersky on Monday revealed what they described as the second case of malicious UEFI firmware found in use in the wild. Security specialists found UEFI implants that appeared to be part of a larger hacking operation carried out by Chinese-speaking operatives against diplomatic organizations and non-governmental organizations in Africa, Asia and Europe, researchers said. It’s an apparent case of cyber-espionage that took place from 2017 to 2019, with the evident aim of gathering information related to North Korea. All of the […]

The post Rare case of UEFI hacking hit targets interested in North Korea, Kaspersky says appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Rare case of UEFI hacking hit targets interested in North Korea, Kaspersky says→

Before targeting Belarus, Eastern Europe-focused hackers flew under the radar

Posted on by

A mysterious cyber-espionage group, active for nearly a decade but documented in detail by private researchers for the first time Friday, has been hacking into government organizations in Eastern Europe in search of secrets. The hacking group has targeted military organizations, foreign ministries and private firms in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Balkans with pinpoint espionage. Researchers from the anti-virus firm ESET, which claimed the discovery and christened the group “XDSpy,” said the attackers have been scouring a few dozen computers in search of sensitive PDF and Microsoft Word documents. One of the few other public indicators that XDSpy was on the prowl came from a February advisory from the Belarusian government’s National Computer Emergency Response Team. That statement listed four Belarusian government email accounts that had been compromised by the attackers, but warned that various government officials had been targeted. The broader region has long been subject to cyber-espionage activity, as hackers from […]

The post Before targeting Belarus, Eastern Europe-focused hackers flew under the radar appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Before targeting Belarus, Eastern Europe-focused hackers flew under the radar→

How hackers took over Facebook accounts to steal $4 million, promote scams

Posted on by

Facebook has fended off plenty of phony, pill-pushing ad campaigns over the years, but the company disrupted one effort last year that was particularly pernicious, and effective. Hackers defrauded Facebook users out of more than $4 million in a scheme that security staffers have connected to a cybercrime network in China. The details, revealed Thursday, demonstrate how attackers breached hundreds of thousands of Facebook accounts, scouring for users with payment methods attached to their profile, such as PayPal. The attackers would disable users’ notifications, and abuse their access to the victim account to place advertisements for diet pills and counterfeit products. The hackers delivered their malware, dubbed SilentFade, through web browsers, rather than Facebook itself, making it more difficult to detect and root out. “We anticipate more platform-specific malware to appear for platforms serving large and growing audiences, as the evolving ecosystem targeting Facebook demonstrates,” Facebook researchers Sanchit Karve and Jennifer Urgilez wrote in a […]

The post How hackers took over Facebook accounts to steal $4 million, promote scams appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading How hackers took over Facebook accounts to steal $4 million, promote scams→

Anthem to pay $39.5 million to states in latest settlement over 2015 hack

Posted on by

Anthem has agreed to pay $39.5 million in penalties and fees resulting from a sweeping 2015 cyberattack on the health insurer as part of a multi-state settlement, the company announced Wednesday. It’s the latest fallout from a major data breach that exposed data on some 79 million people, and which U.S. authorities have blamed on a Chinese hacker. The settlement, based on an investigation by attorneys general in over 40 states, requires Anthem to implement a security program that includes penetration-testing, and logging and monitoring of networks. It also bars Anthem from misrepresenting how the company protects its customers’ privacy and security, according to the New York attorney general’s office. “The company is pleased to have resolved this matter, which is the last open investigation related to the 2015 cyberattack,” Indianapolis-based Anthem said in a statement, adding that it has an “ongoing and consistent focus on protecting information.” The repercussions of the […]

The post Anthem to pay $39.5 million to states in latest settlement over 2015 hack appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Anthem to pay $39.5 million to states in latest settlement over 2015 hack→

Ohio medical center offline following another security incident in the health sector

Posted on by

A cybersecurity incident has forced the computer systems of an Ohio medical center offline for multiple days and prompted the clinic to postpone elective procedures for patients. A statement Tuesday from the Ashtabula County Medical Center, which includes a hospital of more than 200 beds, said the emergency department remains open and that outpatient care has continued as outside security experts investigate the disruption. The medical center did not specify the cause of the security incident, though Wired reported that ransomware was the cause. A spokesperson for the medical center did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. NBC News first reported on the medical center’s statement. The disruption at Ashtabula County Medical Center comes as Universal Health Services, which describes itself as one of the largest health care providers in the U.S. grapples with a suspected ransomware attack. In what has become a familiar refrain in health care organizations’ response to cyberattacks, […]

The post Ohio medical center offline following another security incident in the health sector appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Ohio medical center offline following another security incident in the health sector→

Judge orders Georgia to use paper records at polling places to avoid Election Day delays

Posted on by

A federal judge on Monday ordered polling places across Georgia to keep updated, backup paper records of eligible voters to avoid long lines and disenfranchisement on Election Day. The ruling is intended to prevent a repeat of the June primary election in Georgia, in which voting integrity groups say the malfunctioning of electronic pollbooks caused long waits at the polls. It comes as election officials across the country prepare for an unprecedented election marked by changes in procedure because of the coronavirus. The order from U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg instructs Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to “provide at least a modicum of the voting backup plan tools essential to protect” voters’ rights to cast a ballot. Civil society groups had sought the injunction after the difficulties in the primary. “It is not too late for [Raffensperger and other election officials] to take these reasonable concrete measures to mitigate […]

The post Judge orders Georgia to use paper records at polling places to avoid Election Day delays appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Judge orders Georgia to use paper records at polling places to avoid Election Day delays→

Microsoft looks to expose espionage groups taking aim at NGOs, US politics

Posted on by

Foreign espionage groups, including those bent on undermining the U.S. political process, have targeted non-government organizations and think tanks more than any other sector in a bid to gather intelligence, according to new data from Microsoft. Of the thousands of notifications Microsoft made to customers about state-linked hacking activity from mid-2019 to mid-2020, NGOs accounted for 32% of those alerts, the company said in a report released Tuesday. And over 90% of those notifications have been outside of critical infrastructure sectors. The focus on targets outside Washington suggests hacking groups could be in search of softer targets during an election season when Democratic and Republican campaigns have enlisted more people and technology to protect their networks. Those changes came after suspected Russian military hackers breached the Democratic National Committee in 2016 and leaked emails aimed at damaging Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “At the national level and the leading campaigns, there’s a much higher degree of vigilance,” Microsoft’s Tom Burt told CyberScoop, comparing the state of […]

The post Microsoft looks to expose espionage groups taking aim at NGOs, US politics appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Microsoft looks to expose espionage groups taking aim at NGOs, US politics→

US medical provider UHS blames ‘security issue’ for major outage

Posted on by

Computer networks at Universal Health Services, which describes itself as one of the largest health care providers in the U.S., were down Monday due to what the company described as “an IT security issue.” Multiple media outlets, including NBC News, suggested UHS’s IT network had been hit by ransomware and that some nurses had reverted to pen and paper. In a statement, UHS, which says it oversees 400 hospitals, did not address whether the company had suffered a ransomware attack. A company spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment. “Patient care continues to be delivered safely and effectively” and “no patient data appears to be compromised,” the UHS statement said. It’s the latest in a series of cybersecurity incidents to affect health care facilities during the coronavirus pandemic. The most serious occurred this month when a patient in Germany died after being turned away from a hospital that was hit […]

The post US medical provider UHS blames ‘security issue’ for major outage appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading US medical provider UHS blames ‘security issue’ for major outage→