Ahead of Trump-Putin meeting, Russian Embassy protests arrest of hacker

Russia’s foreign ministry on Wednesday accused the U.S. of “kidnapping” Yury Martyshev, a Latvian man with Russian citizenship who is accused of committing cybercrime. Former U.S. law enforcement officials, however, say that what Russia considers kidnapping is in reality a legitimate and legal effort to arrest a criminal. Martyshev was arrested overseas and extradited to the U.S. late last month to face charges in a Virginia court. He is accused of helping run one of “the largest” hacking marketplaces on the dark web, where customers could trade and purchase illegal penetration, vulnerability and malware testing tools, according to unsealed court documents. He was originally indicted in October 2016. Some experts believe Martyshev was behind the infamous Scan4You service, which went down earlier this year. In a statement posted to the Russian Embassy’s Facebook page, a spokesperson called for the U.S. to return Martyshev, who is also known as Jurijs Martisevs, in order to recognize the “legitimate rights […]

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Manufacturing companies got wrecked by cyber-spies last year, Verizon report says

Cyber-spies backed by nation-states were behind a majority of data breaches experienced by manufacturing companies in 2016, according to Verizon’s newly published 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report. Verizon identified 620 data breach incidents in the manufacturing sector last year — of which 94 percent could be defined as “espionage” driven and attributable to “state-affiliated” actors. Roughly 91 percent of material stolen in these breaches had been categorized as “secret,” relating to proprietary information owned solely by the victim. Cybersecurity experts say hackers largely target the manufacturing industry in order to steal trade secrets, business plans and valuable intellectual property. Verizon defines cyber-espionage as incidents that include “unauthorized network or system access linked to state-affiliated actors and/or exhibiting the motive of espionage.” “When you make stuff, there is always someone else who wants to make it better, or at least cheaper. A great way to make something cheaper is to let […]

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