Author Archives: Sean Lyngaas

Congress must do more in fight against global cybercrime, advocacy group says

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In a speech to Interpol in November, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein lobbied other governments to do more to help Washington track down foreign cybercriminals. “By devoting appropriate resources to international cooperation efforts, we can properly address the increasing threat of cybercrime,” he said, adding later: “No nation should exempt itself from just and reasonable law enforcement cooperation.” Rosenstein was acknowledging that regardless of the Department of Justice’s investments in countering cybercrime in the United States, the department’s ability to put foreign crooks behind bars can rest, in part, on other governments’ cooperation in finding and extraditing them. That’s why, analysts say, it’s crucial to fund U.S. programs to boost foreign governments’ ability to crack down on hackers. A new advocacy effort from the think tank Third Way is trying to focus U.S. policymakers’ attention on making those programs more effective. “We think that the U.S. government should be […]

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CenturyLink sounds the alarm about TheMoon botnet, a versatile tool for fraud

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Botnets have been a staple of malicious cyber activity for years because they can be cheap and facilitate cyberattacks at scale. Now, new research highlights how versatile hordes of infected computers can be in catering to hackers’ needs, from advertisement fraud to brute-force attacks. Researchers at communications provider CenturyLink said Thursday they spent a year tracking a botnet dubbed TheMoon, which can be repurposed by hackers for a range of malicious services. CenturyLink’s team found an iteration of TheMoon that uses infected microprocessor-based devices as proxy servers that can be sold to other attackers. In one case, researchers said they watched a video-ad fraudster use a proxy service to send requests to 19,000 different URLs from one server in the span of six hours. The ease with which TheMoon enables fraud should have companies on alert. “We have reason to believe the botnet actor has sold this proxy botnet as a service to other […]

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U.S. announces disruption of ‘Joanap’ botnet linked with North Korea

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The Justice Department on Wednesday announced a wide-ranging operation to map and disrupt a botnet linked to North Korea that has infected numerous computers across the globe over the last decade. Through a search warrant and court order, the department inflicted a potentially damaging blow to the so-called Joanap botnet, which U.S. officials attributed to the North Korean government. The search warrant allowed the FBI to control servers that mimicked computers within the botnet, giving the bureau a clearer picture of the zombie computer army and the ability to alert victims. Joanap is malware that targets Microsoft Windows. It works in tandem with a worm dubbed Brambul that stalks computers, looking for a vulnerable way in, the Justice Department said in a press release. “Once installed on an infected computer, Joanap would allow the North Korean hackers to remotely access infected computers,” giving them root-level access and the chance to […]

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Senators ask Trump administration how badly shutdown hurt federal cybersecurity

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After former U.S. officials raised concerns that the longest government shutdown in history had weakened federal cybersecurity, lawmakers are asking the Trump administration how bad the damage is. “We are concerned that these circumstances have left our government and citizens vulnerable to cyberattacks,” five Democratic senators wrote in a letter Tuesday to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command. The senators – Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, Massachusetts’ Ed Markey, New Mexico’s Tom Udall, Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, and New Jersey’s Cory Booker – want to know how agencies are preparing to harden their networks for a future shutdown, citing past experience as a cautionary tale. During the 2013 government shutdown, the senators wrote, Chinese hackers compromised the Federal Election Commission’s computer network, crashing sensitive computer systems that disclose billions of dollars in spending each election cycle. “Shutdowns have severe […]

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Cyberthreats rise to the top at Senate hearing on worldwide dangers for U.S.

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In yet another sign that the hacking abilities of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are drawing intense scrutiny from U.S. spy agencies and law enforcement, top federal officials focused on cyberspace Tuesday as part of a broader hearing on the global threats facing the United States. The digital tools and techniques deployed by U.S. adversaries and competitors are “growing in potency and severity,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, we expect these actors and others to rely more and more on cyber capabilities” to advance their interests, Coats said. FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that nation-states are increasingly collaborating with criminal hackers in a “form of outsourcing that makes it even more of a menace.” The annual hearing gives the public a snapshot of the threats at the forefront of U.S. intelligence chiefs’ minds, and hacking allegedly backed by […]

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U.S. charges Huawei and affiliates with extensive list of crimes

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U.S. officials on Monday announced nearly two dozen criminal charges in two separate cases against Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and its affiliates, escalating a long-running U.S. crackdown on Chinese tech companies over allegations of rule-breaking and spying. The first case, a 10-count indictment returned by a federal jury in Washington state, accuses Huawei subsidiaries of stealing trade secrets from telecom company T-Mobile. The other case, a 13-count indictment from a federal jury in New York, alleges that Huawei officials and subsidiaries committed bank and wire fraud, and violated trade sanctions against Iran. Huawei officials are also accused of obstructing justice by trying to move witnesses with knowledge of Huawei’s Iran-based business to China, where they could not be questioned. Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou is accused of being part of the fraud scheme. The U.S. is seeking Meng’s extradition, acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said at a press conference Monday. Huawei executives “repeatedly […]

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North Korea could accelerate commercial espionage to meet Kim’s economic deadline

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Perhaps more than any other nation-state, North Korea-linked hackers have shown no limits in what they will target – from a Hollywood entertainment company to a Bangladeshi bank. Divining a method to the madness is key to warning potential victims. And analysts say that foreign corporations and defectors have been high on the list of Pyongyang’s potential targets lately. On New Year’s Day, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un delivered his annual address, telling North Koreans, and the world, what would preoccupy his reclusive regime’s time in the coming months. The message was clear: with its nuclear weapons program well underway, Pyongyang would continue to try to develop its anemic economy. “The might of the independent socialist economy should be further strengthened,” he said. By 2020, according to its national economic development plan, North Korea wants to make advances in key sectors like coal, agriculture, and machinery, and time is running out. North Korea’s cyber […]

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Shutdown erodes feds’ ability to set cyber strategies, say lawmaker and ex-DHS officials

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A top House lawmaker, along with former Department of Homeland Security officials, say the partial government shutdown is hampering federal officials’ ability to anticipate and proactively address cyberthreats. “We can kind of address things as they come, but we can’t look forward and do additional mitigation and other kinds of things that we normally do,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters Thursday at an event on Capitol Hill on the security implications of the shutdown. “So if somebody tells us about something or we identify it, we can go after it,” added Thompson, who is chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. “But we can’t plan for the next month or the next three months because we don’t have the capacity to do it with the shutdown.” Former DHS officials agreed that the partial shutdown, which began Dec. 22 and has 800,000 workers across all agencies furloughed or working without pay, […]

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Rep. Langevin: We need a DHS briefing to understand extent of DNS hijacking threat

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A key House Democrat wants the Department of Homeland Security to brief lawmakers “as soon as possible” on a new domain name system hacking threat to federal computer networks, and the emergency order the department issued in response. DHS should brief members of the House Homeland Security Committee on the cyberthreat because “we need to understand the scope of this action and how many agencies were actually affected,” Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., said in an interview Wednesday. Langevin was reacting to a rare emergency directive that DHS issued Tuesday ordering civilian agencies to tighten security controls in the face of a suspected Iranian hacking campaign. DHS issued the order out of concern that civilian agencies could be vulnerable to cyberattacks on platforms for managing domain name system (DNS) records, which help ensure that a computer user reaches an intended website. By manipulating DNS records, hackers could direct unwitting users to malicious websites. At least […]

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National intelligence strategy seeks better insight into adversaries’ cyber capabilities

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A national intelligence strategy released Tuesday calls on U.S. spy agencies to improve their understanding of what is driving foreign adversaries’ growing cyber capabilities. The strategy, published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, pledges that intelligence agencies will “increase our awareness and understanding of adversaries’ use of cyber operations—including leadership plans, intentions, capabilities, and operations— to inform decisions and enable action.” The stakes are high; America’s spies must keep pace with growing list of hacking capabilities at adversaries’ disposal, according to the ODNI. “As the cyber capabilities of our adversaries grow, they will pose increasing threats to U.S. security, including critical infrastructure, public health and safety, economic prosperity, and stability,” the document says. There has been no shortage of recent foreign hacking threats to U.S. public and private organizations, from suspected Iranian targeting of domain name systems to alleged Chinese economic espionage. The new strategy recognizes that the […]

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