Estonian man sentenced to prison for role in cyber intrusions, ransomware attacks

Maksim Berezan was sentenced to 66 months in federal prison for cybercrimes, including ransomware extortions.

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Ukraine, looking to fortify itself against Russian attacks, admitted to NATO cyber center

NATO nations voted unanimously on Friday to admit Ukraine to their Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE), a development which experts said will help Ukraine fight off mounting cyberthreats from Russia. The CCDCOE is a NATO-accredited cyber knowledge hub, research institution and training and exercise facility. “They’re one of the leading if not the leading institution for thinking about cyber warfare,” said James Lewis, director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Lewis said the decision to include Ukraine in the CCDCOE will have an immediate impact on its ability to fend off Russian cyberattacks. The center is based in Tallinn, Estonia and is a legacy of the Estonian government’s experience as the target of devastating cyberattacks in 2007. Russia denied being the culprit in those attacks — which disabled everything from cash machines to media outlets — but […]

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

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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Fractory raises $9M to rethink the manufacturing supply chain for metalworks

The manufacturing industry took a hard hit from the Covid-19 pandemic, but there are signs of how it is slowly starting to come back into shape — helped in part by new efforts to make factories more responsive to the fluctuations in demand that come with the ups and downs of grappling with the shifting […] Continue reading Fractory raises $9M to rethink the manufacturing supply chain for metalworks

Estonian Hacker Steals 300,000 Government ID Photos

Estonia’s electronic ID system was hacked last week. Again. A suspect is in custody.
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Four men plead guilty to being go-to ‘bulletproof’ hosts for cybercriminals

Four Eastern European men pleaded guilty to a scheme overseeing websites that hosted malware used to cause victims hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, the Justice Department said Friday. Russian nationals Aleksandr Grichishkin and Andrei Skvortsov, along with Aleksandr Skorodumov from Lithuania and Pavel Stassi of Estonia, allegedly oversaw an organization that rented IP addresses, computers servers and domains to cybercriminals between 2008 and 2015.  The practice, known as “bulletproof hosting,” is popular with digital thieves trying to evade law enforcement agencies. Grichishkin, Skvortsov, Skorodumov and Stassi pleaded guilty to one count of RICO conspiracy. They each face up to 20 years in prison. Crooks have used the hacking tools allegedly hosted by the defendants’ organizations to repeatedly infect U.S. financial institutions and defraud victims. That includes Zeus, a notorious piece of malicious code that a variety of criminals have used to steal over $100 million from victims. Despite […]

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Estonia’s diplomacy training aims to shape state behavior in cyberspace

Diplomats from around the world are convening this week to share ideas about what type of behavior should be allowed in cyberspace, and debate what happens when those rules are broken. The virtual confab, organized by the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and designed for seasoned and green diplomats alike, began Tuesday morning to discuss how international law applies in cyberspace and different attack methods diplomats may encounter when confronting cyber incidents, Estonia’s Ambassador at Large for Cyber Diplomacy Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar told CyberScoop in an interview. While the gathering will touch on historical cyber incidents that have rocked the international norms conversation over the years, including the sweeping WannaCry and NotPetya attacks, the focus of the so-called cyber diplomacy school is not on instruction about the technical details of cyber incidents. It’s about how to negotiate and shape behavior of other governments. “This is not technical training,” Tiirma-Klaar said. “What is […]

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Cyber Command deployed personnel to Estonia to protect elections against Russian threat

Personnel from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Cyber Command deployed to Estonia in recent months as part of a broader effort to protect U.S. elections against foreign hacking, American and Estonian officials announced Thursday. The mission allowed personnel from U.S. Cyber Command and Estonia’s Defense Forces Cyber Command to collaborate on hunting for malicious hacking efforts on critical networks from adversaries, officials said. Estonia in particular could help the U.S. glean intelligence about Russian cyber-operations, as it has borne the brunt of Russian hacking in the past. Montenegro, a perennial target of Russian hacking, has also worked with Cyber Command on similar missions, known as “Hunt Forward” missions, to protect the 2020 presidential elections against foreign hacking. As the thinking goes, Cyber Command can run these kinds of operations to help protect a foreign ally against intrusions conducted by shared adversaries, while also obtaining information that could help protect U.S. […]

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Warren gets $1.4 million to help local cloud infrastructure providers compete against Amazon and other giants

Started as a side project by its founders, Warren is now helping regional cloud infrastructure service providers compete against Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Google and other tech giants. Based in Tallinn, Estonia, Warren’s self-service distributed cloud platform is gaining traction in Southeast Asia, one of the world’s fastest-growing cloud service markets, and Europe. It recently closed […] Continue reading Warren gets $1.4 million to help local cloud infrastructure providers compete against Amazon and other giants