Tim Starks – Page 69 – WindowsTechs.com

The lowly DDoS attack is still a viable threat for undermining elections

Posted on October 27, 2020 by Tim Starks

Scenes like what happened to Florida’s voter registration site on Oct. 6 has played out over and over again: A system goes down, and questions fly. Was there a cyberattack, specifically a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack meant to overwhelm a website site with traffic, knocking it offline? Could there have been too many legitimate visitors rushing to the site to beat the voter registration deadline — that surged past what the system could handle? Or, was it something weirder, as in this case, like pop singer Ariana Grande urging fans on Twitter to register to vote? Florida’s chief information officer eventually blamed misconfigured computer servers. The incident, though, was one of several over the course of the past month that exposed ongoing anxieties about how cyberattacks, accidental outages and other technical failures could upend a polling place, or even an election. Few, if any, election security experts would rank the […]

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US sanctions Russian government institution in connection with Trisis malware

Posted on October 23, 2020 by Tim Starks

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned a Russian government research institute on Friday that it said was connected to the strain of destructive malware frequently labeled the most dangerous in the world. Known as Trisis or Triton, the malicious software is designed to target systems used to safely control emergency shutdowns of industrial plants. Last year, security researchers at Dragos determined that the hackers behind the tool had scanned the networks of U.S. electrical utilities, after the malware initially surfaced in 2017 at a Saudi petrochemical plant. The sanctions mark the first time any government has publicly connected Trisis to Russia. “In recent years, the Triton malware has been deployed against U.S. partners in the Middle East, and the hackers behind the malware have been reportedly scanning and probing U.S. facilities,” Treasury said it its sanctions announcement. “The development and deployment of the Triton malware against our partners is particularly troubling given the Russian government’s involvement in malicious […]

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EU slaps sanctions on GRU leader, Fancy Bear, FBI-wanted hacker over Bundestag attack

Posted on October 22, 2020 by Tim Starks

The European Union on Thursday sanctioned the head of a Russian military intelligence unit, an alleged hacker wanted by the FBI and a Russian government-linked hacking group over a 2015 cyberattack against Germany’s parliament. It’s only the second time the EU has issued cyber-related sanctions, following July sanctions against Russia, China and North Korea in connection with a string of unrelated cyberattacks. Now, as then, the General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, commonly known as the GRU, is among the targets of the EU’s ire. Igor Kostyukov, head of the GRU, was hit with sanctions in Thursday’s action over the Bundestag hack. So, too, was alleged intelligence officer Dmitry Badin, previously indicted in the U.S. for his role in 2016 election interference. The EU also sanctioned the GRU-connected hacking group known as Fancy Bear, among other names, which the U.S. has likewise connected to 2016 election meddling. “The cyber-attack against the German federal parliament targeted the parliament’s information […]

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TrickBot really is on the run after Microsoft, Cyber Command disruption

Posted on October 20, 2020 by Tim Starks

After some initial doubts, Tuesday brought encouraging signs that a multi-front attempt to dismantle the massive TrickBot botnet in advance of Election Day has taken root, perhaps thanks to an extra push. In recent weeks, a Pentagon hacking division and a coalition of organizations led by Microsoft took aim at TrickBot, one of of the world’s largest armies of zombie computers. Fears that attackers could use the botnet to deploy ransomware and disrupt the 2020 election motivated the takedown bids. Microsoft said on Tuesday that, as of the start of this week, it had disabled 120 out of 128 command-and-control servers the company identified as part of TrickBot’s infrastructure, good for a 94% takedown rate. Nearly 60 of the 128 sprung up as cybercriminals sought to fortify its infrastructure, after which Microsoft said it shut down all but one. “To be clear, these numbers will change regularly as we expect action we’ve already […]

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What the FBI did to make headway against COVID-19 research hackers

Posted on October 20, 2020 by Tim Starks

As the FBI investigated alleged Chinese hacking of American COVID-19 research, it used information it found in known victims’ networks to identify others who had been victimized or potentially might be, according to a top bureau official. It was just one step of several in how the FBI confronted threats to that research, said Tonya Ugoretz, deputy assistant director in the bureau’s cyber division, speaking Tuesday at CyberTalks, a virtual summit hosted by Scoop News Group. The FBI’s role in defending vaccine makers and others combating the virus is part of a government-wide effort, which has included indictments and public joint agency warnings sounding the alarm that both China and Russia have been trying to steal U.S. research secrets. The FBI deployed personnel to aid hacking victims and those who faced attempted hacks with their consent, which allowed investigators to collect evidence to aid other potential victims. But that evidence also would be “valuable for any future […]

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US charges Russian GRU officers for NotPetya, other major hacks

Posted on October 19, 2020 by Tim Starks

A federal grand jury returned an indictment against six alleged Russian intelligence officers who, collectively, were responsible for “conducting the most disruptive and destructive series of computer attacks ever attributed to a single group,” the Justice Department announced Monday. Their attacks spanned the globe, including the worldwide 2017 NotPetya outbreak that did more than $1 billion in damage to a number of U.S. organizations, according to the indictment. The six accused hackers work for the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, commonly known as the GRU, that’s been connected to interference in the 2016 U.S. election and other major cyberattacks. “No country has weaponized its cyber capabilities as maliciously or irresponsibly as Russia, wantonly causing unprecedented damage to pursue small tactical advantages and to satisfy fits of spite,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers. “Today the Department has charged these Russian officers with conducting the most disruptive and destructive series of […]

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TikTok unveils bug bounty program, scraps with US government in court over looming ban

Posted on October 15, 2020 by Tim Starks

TikTok announced a global bug bounty program Thursday amid an ongoing court battle to continue operating in the U.S. The program, a partnership with HackerOne, is an expansion of a more limited vulnerability disclosure program for the popular video-sharing app. “This partnership will help us to gain insight from the world’s top security researchers, academic scholars and independent experts to better uncover potential threats and make our security defenses even stronger,” TikTok wrote in a blog post. Researchers who uncover vulnerabilities can make between $50 and $14,800, depending on the severity of the flaw. TikTok has previously worked with security research companies to fix flaws they found. A range of high profile companies have relied on bug bounty programs to solicit reports about vulnerabilities for which internal security personnel failed to account. Often, success depends on the firms’ ability to fix those flaws, and reward outside researchers in a way that doesn’t […]

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Zoom to begin end-to-end encryption rollout with month-long preview

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Tim Starks

Zoom says it will preview its end-to-end encryption feature for all users, free and paid, as the first phase of its plan to fully roll out the security technology. It’s the latest security step for a video conferencing platform that took off in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also underwent criticism over its user data protection mechanisms. The technical preview of end-to-end encryption is the inaugural phase of four, the company said Wednesday, with the idea that it will solicit user feedback during a 30-day period. End-to-end encryption means that no outsiders can access a call, not even law enforcement or Zoom itself. “In typical meetings, Zoom’s cloud generates encryption keys and distributes them to meeting participants using Zoom apps as they join,” the company explained in a blog post. “With Zoom’s E2EE, the meeting’s host generates encryption keys and uses public key cryptography to distribute these keys to the other meeting participants. Zoom’s […]

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Meet FIN11, a cybercrime outfit going after pharma companies while leaning on extortion

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Tim Starks

Researchers have pieced together details about a newly-identified, financially-motivated hacking group they say is behind bold, large and long-running malware campaigns. And it’s only getting worse: The hackers have expanded their range of targets the past two years while using increasingly aggressive ransomware attacks, according to research published Tuesday by FireEye’s threat intelligence unit, Mandiant. The company dubbed the group FIN11, a designation it gives financial crime groups. That makes it the first group to get the FIN label since FIN10 three years ago. The hackers are notable for “removing the last vestiges of restraint” in their ransomware and extortion targeting, said John Hultquist, senior director of analysis for Mandiant Threat Intelligence, a unit of FireEye. They’ve gone after pharmaceutical companies and other health care targets during the COVID-19 pandemic. More broadly, the health care industry has encountered a barrage of attacks from hackers during the pandemic, including ransomware attacks that authorities say have hit hospitals and health […]

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