Author Archives: Tim Starks

National Cyber Director Chris Inglis, new cyber kid on the federal block, begins to stake a claim

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National Cyber Director Chris Inglis is fleshing out what, exactly, his new office plans to do with itself. With a “strategic intent statement,” a personnel move, a pair of interviews and a newspaper op-ed, Inglis and his office on Thursday provided their most concrete objectives to date for a White House post that sprung into existence in January, and that Inglis won confirmation for in June. He joined a crowded field of feds focused on cyber, from other offices within the White House to departments and agencies like the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency and the National Security Agency. Inglis said Thursday that it’s a natural, when looking at the disparate organizations in the federal government with cybersecurity responsibilities, to wonder who’s in charge. But he said there were “more appropriate” questions. “How do we bring coherence, how do drive public-private collaboration, how do we have […]

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Federal CISO Chris DeRusha appointed deputy national cyber director, will serve both roles

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Federal Chief Information Security Officer Chris DeRusha, who has played an integral part in responding to the SolarWinds hack, is getting a second gig as deputy national cyber director for federal cybersecurity. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis hailed DeRusha’s appointment on Twitter Thursday. “Personally announcing Federal CISO Chris DeRusha as the new Deputy National Cyber Director for Federal Cybersecurity,” Inglis tweeted. “We are excited to see how Chris’s dual designation as Federal CISO at @OMBPress will improve federal coherence in the cyber domain.” DeRusha steps into his additional role at a time when questions persist on Capitol Hill about the breakdown of cyber roles within the federal bureaucracy. The national cyber director’s office is the newest addition to that bureaucracy, established only this year. The office is coming into being as the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency is increasingly focused on incident response and information sharing in […]

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‘Cyber event’ knocks dairy giant Schreiber Foods offline amid industry ransomware outbreak

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A “cyber event” knocked plants and distribution centers offline at Schreiber Foods, a multibillion-dollar dairy company, a spokesperson told CyberScoop Wednesday. The incident began affecting operations Friday evening, according Schreiber Foods’ Andrew Tobisch. “We began the process of bringing our plants and distribution centers back up late Monday,” he said. Tobisch would not answer whether the “cyber event” was a ransomware attack, as one news outlet reported. Nonetheless, it marks the latest incident afflicting the food and agriculture sector, a trend that has drawn attention from U.S. national security agencies in recent months. The May ransomware attack on meat supplier JBS, in which the firm paid an $11 million extortion fee, was the most prominent, followed by attacks on two grain cooperatives. Attackers hit Iowa-based New Cooperative in September, demanding $5.9 million, and Crystal Valley Cooperative, a Minnesota agriculture supplier. That series of events triggered an FBI private industry notice, […]

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CISA selects Kim Wyman, GOP official who criticized false election fraud claims, as election security leader

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The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency named a Republican secretary of state who has challenged GOP attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential race as its top election security official on Tuesday. Kim Wyman, Washington’s secretary of state since 2013, will take the job of senior election security lead at CISA, the Department of Homeland Security’s primary cybersecurity arm. “Her decades of experience, unparalleled expertise, and unimpeachable integrity have earned her bipartisan respect at every level of government,” said CISA Director Jen Easterly. “Free and fair elections are a cornerstone of our democracy; Kim and I share a common view that ensuring the security of our elections must be a non-partisan effort.” CNN first reported that the White House was expected to name Wyman on Monday. CISA hopes her state experience will bolster relationships with election administrators across the U.S., although Republicans who have pushed for ballot reviews in states such […]

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Latest Russian espionage activity is broader than SolarWinds-style hacking effort, Microsoft’s Tom Burt says

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An apparent espionage campaign from the same Russian hacking group that breached the U.S. federal contractor SolarWinds in 2020 differed from that incident — which sparked congressional hearings and a reckoning throughout the U.S. federal government — in significant ways, according to Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust. The latest effort unveiled Sunday by Microsoft represents an example of how the group, which the company calls Nobelium and says is connected to the Kremlin’s SVR intelligence agency, targeted whole classes of companies, such at technology resellers and cloud service providers. The company said the intruders compromised 14 of the 140 service providers that were targeted, though investigators appear to have caught the effort relatively early, with Microsoft alerting government officials and publishing an advisory on the matter some five months after the activity appeared to begin. Attackers breached SolarWinds in January 2019, nearly two years […]

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‘Bulletproof’ hosting operators sentenced for role in aiding spread of Zeus malware, which stole $100 million

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A federal judge sentenced two men to multi-year prison terms for their role in providing services to cybercriminals, including some big name malware that cost victims millions of dollars in losses, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. Chief Judge Denise Page Hood of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan gave Pavel Stassi of Estonia 24 months in prison and Aleksandr Skorodumov of Lithuania received 48 months after pleading guilty to one count each of RICO conspiracy. The two men were part of a larger operation providing “bulletproof hosting,”  which involved hosting rented IP addresses, servers, domains and malware to scammers in a way that provided more anonymity and protection from law enforcement than more legitimate hosting providers would provide. The operation in which Stassi and Skorodumov were members from 2009 to 2015 hosted the Zeus malware, used to steal more than $100 million from victims. It also […]

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Seven years later, DHS set to roll out dramatic changes to system for hiring cyber pros

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Soon, a cybersecurity professional at the Department of Homeland Security could make as much money as the vice president of the United States, $255,800 — or more, up to $332,100, if they’re in a geographic market where that salary makes the offer competitive. It’s just one feature of a dramatic overhaul of how DHS hires cyber personnel rolling out on Nov. 15 after seven years in the making. The Cyber Talent Management System dispenses with traditional federal job classifications in place since 1949, changes how applicants prove themselves, ties pay increases to something other than longevity of service and much more. At a time when private sector organizations and government agenies struggle to recruit and retain cyber personnel, DHS officials and outside observers alike are hopeful the system will deliver results. It’s a priority not just for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas but for the chief of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure […]

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NSA, DHS shine light on BlackMatter ransomware threat to food industry, demands of up to $15 million

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A government advisory published Monday warned that BlackMatter ransomware attackers are going after U.S. critical infrastructure, including food and agriculture organizations, and demanding exorbitant payouts. It’s the latest joint alert from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI and the National Security Agency, this time about a form of ransomware that first emerged in July. It comes just days after a similar alert about ransomware threats to water and wastewater facilities. It’s also part of a recent push by federal security agencies to put a focus on the food and agriculture sector. “This advisory highlights the evolving and persistent nature of criminal cyber actors and the need for a collective public and private approach to reduce the impact and prevalence of ransomware attacks,” said Eric Goldstein, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA. BlackMatter seeks between $80,000 and $15 million in cryptocurrency, including bitcoin and Monero, […]

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Accenture lost ‘proprietary information’ in summer ransomware attack

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Accenture has acknowledged in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that outsiders extracted “proprietary information” in a cyber incident this summer. The SEC filing filed Friday provides additional detail on a breach the company first discovered on July 30 and disclosed in early August. The disclosure coincided with the ransomware gang LockBit 2.0 leaking information from the consulting giant after saying Accenture failed to pay a $50 million ransom by its deadline. CyberScoop had previously reported other details of the intrusion. “While the perpetrators were able to acquire certain documents that reference a small number of clients and certain work materials we had prepared for clients, none of the information is of a highly sensitive nature,” read an internal memo that CyberScoop obtained. A spokesperson didn’t directly answer a question about what kind of “proprietary information” the attackers stole, saying that the company’s original statement covered the matter. […]

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Nations investing in cyber, ‘democratization’ of malware are factors accelerating dangers online, CISA official says

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Two trends are combining to amplify the threat that cyber poses to the U.S., according to a top Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency official: nation-states expanding their offensive capabilities, and the wider availability of easily-used hacking tools. Brandon Wales, executive director of the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber wing CISA, said Monday that nations like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea “are investing significantly in tools to target our networks.” A small number of ransomware gangs also are producing malware for wider use as part of their affiliate programs, Wales said at CyberWeek, a Scoop News Group event. “We continue to see a democratization of malicious cyber capabilities,” he said. “Today, hacking tools can be purchased for use by any criminal, regardless of expertise, or even rented to provide as a service capability.” Those separate phenomena are responsible for many of the most troubling developments in cyberspace over the past […]

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