Author Archives: Tim Starks

Proposal for industries to report big cyberattacks, ransomware payments wins Senate approval

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The Senate passed legislation Tuesday evening requiring critical infrastructure owners to report to the feds when they suffer a major cyberattack or make a ransomware payment — shaking loose a bill that got stuck in the chamber last year. Under the measure, which now moves to the House for potential consideration, those critical infrastructure owners and operators as well as federal agencies would have to disclose a significant incident to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency within 72 hours. The same owners and operators would have to report any ransomware payments to CISA, too, only within 24 hours. Its intent is to give CISA the information it needs to more widely share threat data to help curtail major cyberattacks rippling through key targets, such as what happened in late 2020 when federal contractor SolarWinds suffered a compromise that ended up spreading to federal agencies and major tech […]

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US chip maker Nvidia says hackers breached company, stole data

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Hackers stole employee user logins and proprietary company data from Nvidia last week, the U.S. chip maker said Tuesday, but added that it has not seen evidence of a ransomware attack. A ransomware group known as Lapsus$ claims to be leaking Nvidia data. “We have no evidence of ransomware being deployed on the NVIDIA environment or that this is related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” a company spokesperson said. “We are aware that the threat actor took employee credentials and some NVIDIA proprietary information from our systems and has begun leaking it online.” The spokesperson did not answer questions about a Telegraph report that the incident partially shut down operations for two days. Nvidia says it has notified law enforcement about the Feb. 23 breach, contacted cyber incident response experts and bolstered its defenses. It was a tumultuous February for the company. On Feb. 7, with regulatory hurdles mounting, the company […]

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Facebook, Twitter, Google intercept Russian propaganda, disinformation about Ukraine

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In recent days, social media companies have gotten more active in stemming the flow of official Russian propaganda, as well tackling sneakier efforts to spread disinformation about Ukraine. The steps follow pressure from policymakers in the U.S. and elsewhere for social media companies to counter narratives from Russia as it conducts its military offense. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said Monday that it had removed about 40 accounts based out of Russia and Ukraine posing as legitimate news sources, which were pushing the narrative that the West had betrayed Ukraine and that Ukraine was a failed state. It also said it had taken steps to counter hacking threats to Facebook members from Ghostwriter, a suspected Russia- and Belarus-linked disinformation and hacking operation. Also Monday, Twitter said it would add labels to accounts sharing links to Russian state-affiliated media outlets, and was “taking steps to significantly reduce the […]

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Facebook, Twitter, Google intercept Russian propaganda, disinformation about Ukraine

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In recent days, social media companies have gotten more active in stemming the flow of official Russian propaganda, as well tackling sneakier efforts to spread disinformation about Ukraine. The steps follow pressure from policymakers in the U.S. and elsewhere for social media companies to counter narratives from Russia as it conducts its military offense. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said Monday that it had removed about 40 accounts based out of Russia and Ukraine posing as legitimate news sources, which were pushing the narrative that the West had betrayed Ukraine and that Ukraine was a failed state. It also said it had taken steps to counter hacking threats to Facebook members from Ghostwriter, a suspected Russia- and Belarus-linked disinformation and hacking operation. Also Monday, Twitter said it would add labels to accounts sharing links to Russian state-affiliated media outlets, and was “taking steps to significantly reduce the […]

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Backbone is everything, don’t be owned by your infrastructure: Lessons from Ukraine for America

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After weeks and months of saber-rattling, Russia has brutally invaded Ukraine. Bullying autocracies are reaching back and executing old playbooks — in this instance exceptionally audaciously — and around the globe they will be looking to see how allied democracies react and respond to Russia’s military aggression. For both attacker and defender, cyber domain will figure prominently. Indeed, it already has. Consider “intelligence preparation of the battlefield,” or IPB. It’s what military professionals do to scope the lay of the land — both physical and virtual — before taking on their target full bore. And it’s what Russia had been doing in and to Ukraine before launching fuller-scale operations. But in the case of Ukraine, the task of IPB was immeasurably simplified for Russia. Why? Because Russia — in its Soviet incarnation — was the source of Ukraine’s infrastructure. Postwar pipes for everything from water to telecommunications in Ukraine is […]

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FBI, CISA, Cyber Command take aim at cyber-espionage by Iran’s MuddyWater group

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U.S. and U.K. government agencies called out Iranian government-affiliated hackers Thursday, accusing them of being behind cyber-espionage targeting the defense, local government, oil and natural gas and telecommunications sectors across the globe. The joint alert points a finger at MuddyWater, which the U.S. government for the first time last month attributed directly to Tehran. In the latest warning, the government agencies said that they have observed MuddyWater on the move in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America since 2018. “MuddyWater actors are positioned both to provide stolen data and accesses to the Iranian government and to share these with other malicious cyber actors,” reads the alert. The bulletin is the joint work of the the FBI, Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the U.S. Cyber Command Cyber National Mission Force and the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre. MuddyWater has a long history of allegedly spying on primarily […]

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Another round of ‘wiper’ malware appears in Ukrainian networks

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Security researchers detected new destructive malware spreading in Ukraine on Wednesday, following evidence of distributed denial-of-service disruptions for government agencies — both of which overlapped with the beginnings of a Russian invasion. ESET said the data-wiping malware was “installed on hundreds of machines in the country,” and there were signs that the attackers had been preparing for almost two months. Silas Cutler, principle reverse engineer and resident hacker at Stairwell, said that the wiper damages a system’s master boot record, which tells a machine how to start up. That’s similar to malware known as WhisperGate that was used in an attack in January in Ukraine. Symantec, too, observed the wiper in action, and confirmed to CyberScoop that it has seen it in Latvia as well. Juan-Andres Guerrero-Saade, principal threat researcher at SentinelOne, said the wiper appeared to be more dangerous than the malware uncovered in January. None of the researchers […]

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National Cyber Director Chris Inglis calls for ‘new social contract’ to redistribute risk

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Cyberspace needs a “new social contract” where “isolated individuals, small businesses and local governments” no longer shoulder “absurd levels of risk,” says a top U.S. cyber official. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis, writing in Foreign Affairs over the weekend with a senior adviser, said that the tech sector should make deeper investments in hardware and software security and the U.S. government should take a greater role in fostering digital defenses. “Those more capable of carrying the load — such as governments and large firms — must take on some of the burden, and collective, collaborative defense needs to replace atomized and divided efforts,” write Inglis and Harry Krejsa, the acting assistant national cyber director for strategy and research. “Until then, the problem will always look like someone else’s to solve.” Their overarching message about the need to improve private-public cooperation has been a refrain of cyber experts for decades. The […]

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Ransomware spree hitting European oil, transport companies

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European oil and transportation services have spent all week under attack by ransomware. The latest victim, aviation services company Swissport, announced Friday that ransomware struck part of its IT infrastructure, causing flight delays and knocking its website offline. The company said last month that in 2019, it fueled 2.3 million flights, and claims 2,000 employees at 40 airports across six countries. ⚠️ A part of #Swissport’s IT infrastructure was subject to a ransomware attack. The attack has been largely contained, and we are working actively to fully resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Swissport regrets any impact the incidence has had on our service delivery. — Swissport (@swissportNews) February 4, 2022 The announcement comes one day after reports of attacks on oil port terminals in Belgium and the Netherlands. Earlier this week, two German oil companies became ransomware victims as well, forcing one of the companies into operating at […]

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State Department sounds alarm over Red Cross breach

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The U.S. State Department said the hack of the International Committee of the Red Cross last month was a “dangerous development” that has harmed the organization’s family re-unification mission. The commentary from Foggy Bottom comes in response to a Jan. 19 announcement from the Red Cross that a cyberattack compromised personal data for more than half a million people from at least 60 Red Cross and associated Red Crescent national organizations across the globe. “Targeting the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement’s sensitive and confidential data is a dangerous development,” said Ned Price, a spokesman for the State Department. “It has real consequences: this cyber incident has harmed the global humanitarian network’s ability to locate missing people and reconnect families. This is why it is so vital that humanitarian data be respected and only used for intended purposes.” Price also called on other nations to join the State Department and […]

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