Collaborate Disseminate
The influence campaign includes a phony Netflix documentary and seeks to undermine France and the International Olympic Committee.
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U.S. agencies want to secure the Border Gateway Protocol, but experts question whether their approach could worsen security.
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The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently revised its policy on charging violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a 1986 law that remains the primary statute by which federal prosecutors pursue cybercrime cases. The new guidelines state that prosecutors should avoid charging security researchers who operate in “good faith” when finding and reporting vulnerabilities. But legal experts continue to advise researchers to proceed with caution, noting the new guidelines can’t be used as a defense in court, nor are they any kind of shield against civil prosecution. Continue reading What Counts as “Good Faith Security Research?”
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says it is investigating reports that hackers gained unauthorized access to an agency portal that taps into 16 different federal law enforcement databases. KrebsOnSecurity has learned the alleged compromise is tied to a cybercrime and online harassment community that routinely impersonates police and government officials to harvest personal information on their targets. Continue reading DEA Investigating Breach of Law Enforcement Data Portal
The Department of Justice and FBI announced they used remote access technology to shut down a Sandworm botnet.
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The sixth and final defendant in a gang accused of perpetrating a multimillion-dollar SIM hijacking case was sentenced to 10 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $121,000 in restitution, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday. Garrett Endicott, 22, from Missouri, was connected to a hacking group known as “The Community,” which engaged in a string of SIM hijacking incidents targeting individual users’ cryptocurrency exchange accounts in seven states, according to DOJ. SIM hijacking, or SIM swapping, is a technique where an attacker takes control of a target’s phone number, allowing the attackers to receive text messages and other forms of two-factor authentication protocols that are then used to log into accounts. The gang, known as “The Community,” faced charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Three people who worked for mobile phone providers and helped the gang were also charged with […]
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Two Iranian nationals engaged in a sprawling effort to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections — including by gaining access to confidential voter information from at least one state election website and attempting to access 11 states in total — according to a federal indictment unsealed Thursday. The defendants, Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi, 24, and Sajjad Kashian, 27, face charges of computer fraud, voter intimidation and transmission of interstate threats. Part of the campaign was allegedly sending emails to Democratic voters purportedly from the Proud Boys, a right wing nationalist hate group, demanding that they vote for former President Trump. That effort was quickly identified by journalists and the U.S. government as a likely Iranian interference effort. The initial reporting on the Proud Boys emails painted a picture of a crude campaign that was almost immediately unmasked. But Thursday’s indictment suggests a much more complex operation. Officials told reporters […]
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed today that its fbi.gov domain name and Internet address were used to blast out thousands of fake emails about a cybercrime investigation. According to an interview with the person who claimed responsibility for the hoax, the spam messages were sent by abusing insecure code in an FBI online portal designed to share information with state and local law enforcement authorities. Continue reading Hoax Email Blast Abused Poor Coding in FBI Website
Federal prosecutors on Wednesday unsealed an indictment against a 22-year-old British man accused of stealing $784,000 in cryptocurrency from a Manhattan-based holding company. U.S. attorneys in the Southern District of New York say Joseph James O’Connor and his associates SIM-swapped three executives between March and May in 2019 at a company that maintained cryptocurrency wallet infrastructure for various international exchanges. SIM-swapping occurs when an attacker takes control of a victim’s phone number by linking the number to a device controlled by the attacker. CyberScoop could not immediately locate an attorney for O’Connor. The operation netted the group various amounts of litecoin, ethereum, and bitcoin totaling roughly $784,000. The indictment, originally filed on Aug. 25, charges O’Connor with conspiracy to commit computer hacking, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit money laundering. O’Connor — also known as “PlugWalkJoe” — was arrested in Spain in July after […]
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Investigators recovered $2.3 million in bitcoin paid by the Colonial Pipeline Company to DarkSide following a ransomware attack in early May. On June 7, the Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed that law enforcement agencies had been tracking trans… Continue reading DOJ Recovers $2.3M in Bitcoin Ransom Paid by Colonial Pipeline