Category Archives: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Feds’ spending on facial recognition tech continues unmitigated, despite privacy concerns

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The FBI on Dec. 30 signed a deal with Clearview AI for an $18,000 subscription license to the company’s facial recognition technology. While the value of the contract might seem just a drop in the bucket for the agency’s nearly $10 billion budget, the contract was significant in that it cemented the agency’s relationship with the controversial firm. The FBI previously acknowledged using Clearview AI to the Government Accountability Office but did not specify if it had a contract with the company. The FBI didn’t respond to a request for comment, but it isn’t the only federal law enforcement agency to ramp up its procurement of privately-owned facial recognition technologies in recent months. In September, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent almost $4 million on facial recognition technology from a company called Trust Stamp, as Business Insider first reported. The same month agency purchased a contract with Clearview AI starting at […]

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Hackers fire off hoax email messages from FBI account after exploiting misconfigured server

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Hackers sent a barrage of fake emails over the weekend using an FBI email account, the agency acknowledged, to falsely warn recipients that an attacker stole their information. The nonprofit spam-tracking service Spamhaus Project estimated that the hoax email campaign comprised as many as 100,000 messages. The FBI said that the hackers temporarily broke in via a software misconfiguration for its Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal that the bureau uses to communicate with state and local law enforcement agencies. “While the illegitimate email originated from an FBI operated server, that server was dedicated to pushing notifications for LEEP and was not part of the FBI’s corporate email service,” the FBI said in a Sunday update. “No actor was able to access or compromise any data or PII on the FBI’s network.” The email campaign sought to smear Vinny Troia, a cybersecurity author and CEO of Night Lion Security, as the party […]

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US charges alleged extortionist, HeheStreams operator with demanding $150K from MLB

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U.S. prosecutors have charged a 30-year-old man with attempting to extort Major League Baseball and broadcasting illegal game streams after he allegedly breached the league’s website. Attorneys from the Southern District of New York charged Joshua Streit with running HeheStreams.com, a website that allowed users to stream games from the MLB, National Hockey League, National Basketball Association and the National Football League for a fee, according to a complaint. The site attracted a sizable following on social media and discussion forums like Reddit, where fans congregated to praise the cheap prices HeheStreams offered in comparison to the leagues’ official streaming services, the Wall Street Journal reported. In March 2021, prosecutors say, Streit contacted MLB personnel to complain about “a lack of gratitude” after he alerted the organization about a “network vulnerability.” Streit allegedly requested $150,000 from the MLB in exchange for his apparent disclosure. An MLB executive responded to Streit […]

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‘Cyber event’ knocks dairy giant Schreiber Foods offline amid industry ransomware outbreak

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A “cyber event” knocked plants and distribution centers offline at Schreiber Foods, a multibillion-dollar dairy company, a spokesperson told CyberScoop Wednesday. The incident began affecting operations Friday evening, according Schreiber Foods’ Andrew Tobisch. “We began the process of bringing our plants and distribution centers back up late Monday,” he said. Tobisch would not answer whether the “cyber event” was a ransomware attack, as one news outlet reported. Nonetheless, it marks the latest incident afflicting the food and agriculture sector, a trend that has drawn attention from U.S. national security agencies in recent months. The May ransomware attack on meat supplier JBS, in which the firm paid an $11 million extortion fee, was the most prominent, followed by attacks on two grain cooperatives. Attackers hit Iowa-based New Cooperative in September, demanding $5.9 million, and Crystal Valley Cooperative, a Minnesota agriculture supplier. That series of events triggered an FBI private industry notice, […]

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NSA, DHS shine light on BlackMatter ransomware threat to food industry, demands of up to $15 million

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A government advisory published Monday warned that BlackMatter ransomware attackers are going after U.S. critical infrastructure, including food and agriculture organizations, and demanding exorbitant payouts. It’s the latest joint alert from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI and the National Security Agency, this time about a form of ransomware that first emerged in July. It comes just days after a similar alert about ransomware threats to water and wastewater facilities. It’s also part of a recent push by federal security agencies to put a focus on the food and agriculture sector. “This advisory highlights the evolving and persistent nature of criminal cyber actors and the need for a collective public and private approach to reduce the impact and prevalence of ransomware attacks,” said Eric Goldstein, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA. BlackMatter seeks between $80,000 and $15 million in cryptocurrency, including bitcoin and Monero, […]

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A former top US election official urges sweeping security improvements, warning ‘democracy is in trouble’

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The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s former lead election security official is recommending comprehensive changes to protect the ballot in future elections, from physical safety upgrades for election workers and federal agency revamps to mandated disclosure of cyber incidents. A report published Thursday from former CISA election adviser Matt Masterson, who now works for Stanford’s Internet Observatory Cyber Policy Center, is a response to the complications that surrounded the 2020 elections. Namely, 2020 was marred by misinformation that undermined public faith in elections, inconsistent funding to mitigate IT vulnerabilities and threats against election officials, the report concludes. The battle over the 2020 presidential race rages on, with the GOP pushing partisan election reviews in several states despite numerous recounts that concluded with Joe Biden as the victor. “Our democracy is in trouble,” Masterson told CyberScoop. “We are in a downward spiral of distrust of the process. If we don’t make […]

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Peanut butter and ProtonMail: US charges underscore evolution of espionage in digital age

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It’s an espionage case so outlandish that the renowned espionage writer John le Carré would have rejected the idea as too difficult to believe. The U.S. Department of Justice on Saturday unsealed charges against a Navy engineer who allegedly tried passing classified information about nuclear submarines in exchange for a payment. The engineer is accused of working with his wife to transmit military secrets to a removable memory card, hiding the device in a peanut butter sandwich and then passing it to an individual they believed was an agent for an unnamed foreign government. In fact, the agent worked for the FBI. The complaint against the couple, Jonathan and Diana Toebbe, reads like a modern day spy thriller, complete with details about protected national secrets, cryptocurrency and the use of encrypted email in an attempt to secure sensitive communications. Like the Russian government’s weaponization of social media to influence American […]

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CISA, FBI, NSA warn of increased attacks involving Conti ransomware

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The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency, the FBI and National Security Agency urged organizations in an alert Wednesday to update their systems amid an increase in Conti ransomware attacks. DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI reported over 400 attacks using Conti ransomware against mostly U.S. targets. The group primarily runs “double extortion” campaigns in which hackers encrypt and steal files. In the scheme, they demand a ransom from the victim in order to restore access to the systems; if the victim doesn’t pay, the actors threaten to leak the stolen data. At least 16 of the 400 reported attacks targeted U.S. health care providers and first responder networks, the FBI reported in May. The Conti ransomware gang has already been linked to several major attacks this year. In June the gang stole roughly 18,000 files from the Tulsa police, leaking some after the city refused to […]

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Cyber Command alerts US firms of ‘ongoing’ hacks targeting Atlassian enterprise software

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U.S. Cyber Command is warning American organizations that hackers are exploiting software flaws in a popular project management tool, an indication that attackers could be preparing for a larger campaign that creates headaches throughout the private sector. Cyber Command — the Defense Department’s cyber unit — said in a tweet Friday that “mass exploitation” of the issue “is ongoing and expected to accelerate.” The issue exists in Atlassian Confluence, an enterprise application marketed as a means of enabling remote work in corporate environments. Atlassian, an Australian corporation, warned clients on Aug. 25 to update their systems to the latest version of Confluence. “Please patch immediately if you haven’t already — this cannot wait until after the weekend,” the Cyber Command warning stated. The message comes after the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber division, along with the FBI, warned firms to be on guard for ransomware attacks ahead of Labor Day, […]

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FBI warns of ‘large increase’ in sextortion attacks, with $8 million in reported losses in 2021

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Hackers and creeps extorted $8 million from Americans over the first seven months of the year by threatening to publish sexual images unless victims paid a fee, according to figures from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI bulletin published Thursday confirms what many cybercrime researchers may have already feared: Sextortion scams are prevalent, and profitable. More than 16,000 victims reported their issues to the FBI, with nearly half of the complaints coming from people between 20 and 39 years old. The 16,000 complaints almost certainly represent a fraction of the true figure, as victims of sex-related crimes often choose not to report issues to the police for a variety of reasons, including fears of retaliation or a belief that authorities won’t help resolve the issue. The bureau reports that the number of complaints in 2021 marks a “large increase,” though the precise size of the uptick remains unclear. The […]

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