Author Archives: Tim Starks

US, allies pledge to combat money laundering as part of efforts to slow ransomware

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Nations must better clamp down on money laundering in order to disrupt ransomware gangs’ illicit financial transactions, according to a statement Thursday from 32 countries that participated in two days of White House meetings focused on slowing hackers and digital extortion. The joint statement also included commitments to other methods of countering ransomware, such as encouraging cyber hygiene practices to the private sector, collaborating across law enforcement and national security agencies and using diplomatic pressure against nations that harbor cybercriminals. The initiative comes after a White House summit that included presentations and intelligence sharing between countries including Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France and Germany, among others. The two days of meetings were the latest steps the Biden administration has taken to battle ransomware, a frequent focus of the White House since major attacks this summer on Colonial Pipeline, JBS and Kaseya. However, the meetings excluded Russia, […]

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A former top US election official urges sweeping security improvements, warning ‘democracy is in trouble’

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The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s former lead election security official is recommending comprehensive changes to protect the ballot in future elections, from physical safety upgrades for election workers and federal agency revamps to mandated disclosure of cyber incidents. A report published Thursday from former CISA election adviser Matt Masterson, who now works for Stanford’s Internet Observatory Cyber Policy Center, is a response to the complications that surrounded the 2020 elections. Namely, 2020 was marred by misinformation that undermined public faith in elections, inconsistent funding to mitigate IT vulnerabilities and threats against election officials, the report concludes. The battle over the 2020 presidential race rages on, with the GOP pushing partisan election reviews in several states despite numerous recounts that concluded with Joe Biden as the victor. “Our democracy is in trouble,” Masterson told CyberScoop. “We are in a downward spiral of distrust of the process. If we don’t make […]

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White House kicks off international ransomware meeting amid global barrage

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A parade of nations recounted grim experiences with ransomware at the start of a two-day White House-led summit on Wednesday, where the gathered officials will collaborate on how to counter the rise of digital extortion. Israel was, at the moment, dealing with an ongoing ransomware attack at a major hospital, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center. Ireland and the Czech Republic have experienced similar attacks on their medical centers. South Korea has seen a 70% year-over-year increase in ransomware incidents, and the United Arab Emirates has seen a 200% rise. Each anecdote, each statistic fed into the White House message for the day that ransomware is a global issue that will require collective action. Scheduled sessions will cover resilience, illicit finance, disrupting criminals and diplomacy, each led by officials from a different country. “No one country, no one group can solve this problem,” said U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. “Transnational criminals […]

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White House set to lead 30 nations in ransomware discussions, sans Russia

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The White House on Wednesday and Thursday will convene meetings with representatives from more than 30 countries to discuss how to counter ransomware, leaving out the country the president most frequently criticizes for hosting gangs of hackers: Russia. “Participants will cover everything from efforts to improve national resilience, to experiences addressing the misuse of virtual currency to launder ransom payments, our respective efforts to disrupt and prosecute ransomware criminals and diplomacy as a tool to counter ransomware,” a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday. The official didn’t specify why Russia didn’t get an invitation beyond unnamed “constraints.” The lack of an invitation this time “doesn’t preclude future opportunities for them to participate.” The U.S. also has other avenues for discussing ransomware with the Kremlin, the official said. The lack of an invitation for Russia exemplifies the tensions over when the U.S. might involve more adversarial nations in discussions over […]

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OMB orders federal agencies to let CISA access defenses of devices, servers

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The White House is directing agencies to let the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency work with them on their efforts to protect endpoints, such as computer workstations and servers — an area where officials have said the federal government fell short in the SolarWinds hack. The Office of Management and Budget issued a memo on Friday that sets a 90-day deadline for CISA, the main cyber wing of the Department of Homeland Security, to access agencies’ current endpoint detection and response deployments. It then spells out timelines for other steps to improve their endpoint defenses. OMB says the goal is to establish “improved agency capabilities for early detection, response, and remediation of cybersecurity incidents on their networks, using advanced technologies and leading practices.” The memo is an outgrowth of President Joe Biden’s cybersecurity executive order from May. And the focus on endpoints reflects one of the main takeaways from a […]

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Emergent ransomware gang FIN12 strikes hospitals, moves quickly against big targets

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A Russian-speaking ransomware gang in recent months has aggressively targeted North American organizations with more than $300 million in revenue, with a ruthless focus on the health care sector amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new findings. The threat intelligence firm Mandiant published details Thursday about a group it calls FIN12, a gang that moves quickly and uses an array of established hacking tools to infiltrate its targets. Over the past year, hackers have kept investigators busy, accounting for 20% of the ransomware incidents that Mandiant has responded to, with the next highest attackers at 5%, according to Kimberly Goody, the company’s director of cyber crime analysis. “They have a significantly higher cadence of attacks from our perspective,” she said. “We also see that, unlike other threat actors, this group has also aggressively pursued victims in critical sectors like health care, even during the pandemic, which had resulted in several actors saying that […]

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US to increase scrutiny on cryptocurrency, federal contractors in effort to slow hacking

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U.S. officials unveiled a suite of cybersecurity initiatives Wednesday, from cracking down on illicit cryptocurrency usages to increasing transparency about data breaches, as part of an ongoing White House effort to slow rampant cybercrime. The Justice Department signaled it will increase its focus on illicit use of virtual money, which is frequently used in ransomware attacks, and move to punish federal contractors that hide security incidents. In a separate plan, the Transportation Security Administration this year will require top air and rail transportation companies to report cyberattacks to the government, name an internal cyber chief capable of corresponding about cyber incidents and develop a plan for recovering from attacks. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco unveiled two initiatives: a national cryptocurrency enforcement team and a civil cyber fraud initiative. Ransomware and cryptocurrency are “inexorably linked” because of the anonymity that cryptocurrency payments help afford, Monaco said at the Aspen Cyber Summit. […]

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Suspected Chinese hackers masqueraded as Indian government to send COVID-19 phishing emails

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An increasingly active Chinese government-linked hacking group impersonated Indian government agencies with phishing lures related to COVID-19 statistics and tax legislation, researchers say. It was the continuation of a campaign that dates to the earliest days of the pandemic, Blackberry said in a blog post Tuesday. The company tied together several threads of operations by APT41, a joint cyber-espionage and cybercrime organization that investigators have repeatedly tied to Beijing and that Blackberry said was responsible for the India-themed phishing lures. The permutation targeting India preyed on the same fears that hacking groups began seizing on in after the coronavirus outbreak. BlackBerry on Monday didn’t answer questions about the timeframe in which APT41 sent the India-themed lures, what its possible motives were and what industries the emails targeted. “The image we uncovered was that of a state-sponsored campaign that plays on people’s hopes for a swift end to the pandemic as […]

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Rep. Katko introduces bill that would prioritize security for key US critical infrastructure

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The top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee introduced legislation Tuesday directing the Homeland Security Department’s cyber wing to identify U.S. digital infrastructure that, if attacked, would severely debilitate national security, economic security or public safety. Under the legislation from Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency would designate the nation’s “systemically important critical infrastructure” (or “SICI”). The legislation also would make it a priority for CISA to lend its protective services, such as continuous monitoring and detection of cybersecurity risks, to the identified owners and operators. It’s an attempt, Katko said, identify which of the 16 sectors currently labeled as critical infrastructure are truly essential. “To mitigate risks to our economic and national security going forward, we need a clear process for identifying which infrastructure constitutes systemically important critical infrastructure,” Katko said in announcing the legislation. “Disruption to this infrastructure — ranging from pipelines to […]

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Google pushes emergency update for Chrome zero-days, the latest in a hectic year for vulnerabilities

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Google Chrome has issued emergency updates for two zero-day flaws that attackers are exploiting, the second pair for the browser in a month. It’s been a record year for such flaws, which previously unknown to the vendor. Chrome itself has caught 12 zero-days to date in 2021 compared to eight in all of 2020, according to Google’s Project Zero “0day in the Wild” database, which tracks zero-days. By many measurements, Chrome is the world’s most popular browser, with one report putting its user count at nearly 3.3 billion. That makes it a lucrative target for hackers. There doesn’t appear to be just one answer for the rise in zero-days in 2021, even as more people seem to invest in hacking techniques. Defenders are also improving their own detection skills. “Google is aware the exploits” for the two flaws “exist in the wild,” the company wrote on Thursday. Google otherwise didn’t […]

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