Category Archives: Czech Republic

Court hands Microsoft control of websites linked to spying by Chinese hackers

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Microsoft obtained a court order to seize websites from a Chinese government-linked espionage group that was using the sites to attack government agencies, think tanks and human rights organizations in 29 countries, the company said Monday. The legal move is aimed at a hacking outfit that Microsoft calls Nickel, which is also known as APT15, Ke3chang or Vixen Panda. It’s been around since at least 2010, and frequently spies on foreign affairs of interest to China. “Obtaining control of the malicious websites and redirecting traffic from those sites to Microsoft’s secure servers will help us protect existing and future victims while learning more about Nickel’s activities,” wrote Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust. “Our disruption will not prevent Nickel from continuing other hacking activities, but we do believe we have removed a key piece of the infrastructure the group has been relying on for this […]

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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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Victims of Microsoft Exchange Server zero-days emerge

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The list of victims potentially affected by Microsoft zero-day flaws is growing by the day. The email systems of the city of Prague and the Czech Republic’s Labour Ministry have been impacted in recent days in hacking incidents, government officials said Thursday. The Czech Office for Cyber and Information Security confirmed it is responding to attacks caused by the zero-days, while Norway’s National Security Authority also warned victims were cropping up in Norway earlier this week. The steady flow of announcements of email hacking should come as no surprise after the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned of the “likelihood of widespread exploitation” of vulnerabilities that Microsoft revealed earlier this week. The effort appears to be an espionage operation run by a Chinese state-sponsored group interested in accessing email accounts and targeting victims with malware in order to establish long-term data collection capabilities, […]

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Triple-Threat Cryptocurrency RAT Mines, Steals and Harvests

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KryptoCibule spreads via pirated software and game torrents. Continue reading Triple-Threat Cryptocurrency RAT Mines, Steals and Harvests→

Volunteer cybersecurity pros say they’ve stymied hacks against health care organizations

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A volunteer group of cybersecurity professionals formed to protect computer networks during the coronavirus pandemic says it has helped dismantle nearly 3,000 malicious internet domains and identified more than a 2,000 software vulnerabilities in health care institutions around the world. “The threats are coming in like a firehose; as fast as we can take things down, there are new [threats] there,” said Marc Rogers, who is an executive with cybersecurity company Okta and one of the founders of the volunteer group. Known as the Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) League, the group’s membership has soared from a few dozen since its founding last month to some 1,400 people in 76 countries today. Security specialists from technology giants like Microsoft are members, and the group says it has formed close connections with law enforcement agencies. Their services are in high demand as health care organizations strain to deal with COVID-19, which has killed more […]

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Czech cyber officials warn of serious threat to health care sector

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Cybersecurity authorities in the Czech Republic on Thursday warned the public about the threat of an “extensive campaign of cyberattacks” on IT systems and health care facilities that could be carried out in the coming days. The Czech government’s main cybersecurity agency said a recent spearphishing campaign could indicate that “the preparatory phase of the attacks is already in progress.” “The information available to us leads to a reasonable fear of the real threat of serious cyberattacks on major targets in the Czech Republic, but especially on healthcare systems, ” said Karel Řehka, director of the Czech National Cyber and Information Security Agency. Under Czech law, the advisory issued by the cyber agency requires operators of critical infrastructure and major IT systems to heed the warning and take defensive measures. The agency is telling organizations to immediately create offline backups for their data and block remote internet access to systems […]

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Czech Republic’s second-biggest hospital is hit by cyberattack

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A large Czech Republic hospital responsible for running tests for the novel coronavirus said Friday that a cyberattack had hit its computer systems. It was not immediately clear how, if at all, the hack would affect University Hospital Brno’s ability to test for the COVID-19 virus, but it was nevertheless a reminder of how cyberattacks have the potential to exacerbate the global health crisis. “Basic operation has been preserved, some computer systems are limited,” the hospital, based in the Czech Republic’s second largest city, Brno, tweeted. Some scheduled operations would have to be postponed, the hospital’s director said. A hospital spokesperson could not be reached for further comment. Details about the nature and source of the attack were not available. The Czech national cybersecurity agency and Czech police were on the scene helping the hospital respond. The hospital — the Czech Republic’s second-largest — is managed by the country’s health ministry, according to its website. […]

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Czech software firm Avast says CCleaner was attacked — again

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An unidentified attacker used stolen credentials to gain high-level privileges on the network of Czech software security vendor Avast, the company said Monday. The target of the persistent attack was likely Avast’s software-cleaning tool, CCleaner — the same product that was infiltrated in an infamous 2017 supply-chain attack breach that affected over 2 million computers. Worried that the attackers would manipulate CCleaner again, Avast said it halted an upcoming release of the product, revoked its previous security certificate, and put out a security update to users. Those measures, Avast CISO Jaya Baloo assured customers, were enough to ensure that CCleaner users were unaffected by the attack. Avast, which boasts of 400 million users of its products around the world, said it will study its network logs to learn more about the intrusion. “[I]t is clear that this was an extremely sophisticated attempt against us that had the intention to leave no traces […]

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Czech Republic Blames Russia for Yearlong Email Breach

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The Czech government’s Security Information Service (BIS) revealed in a report that hackers associated with the Russian government are responsible for an email breach, compromising the email system of the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affa… Continue reading Czech Republic Blames Russia for Yearlong Email Breach→