Category Archives: Financial

DeepDotWeb boss pleads guilty to laundering millions

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The administrator of a dark web marketplace that served as a gateway for purchasing heroin, firearms and hacking tools pleaded guilty to money laundering charges on Wednesday. The Justice Department said that Tal Prihar administered DeepDotWeb, where he received $8.4 million in kickbacks from dark web marketplaces for providing prospective customers with direct links to those sites, which sold illegal goods but weren’t easily found via search engines. When law enforcement indicted Prihar and an alleged co-conspirator in 2019, authorities hailed it as “the single most significant law enforcement disruption of the Darknet to date.” French law enforcement captured Prihar, an Israeli native who had lived in Brazil. Israeli law enforcement arrested the alleged co-owner of the site, Michael Phan, who handled day-to-day operations. U.S. authorities previously seized DeepDotWeb. “For six years, DeepDotWeb was a gateway to facilitate the illegal purchase of items to include dangerous drugs, weapons, and malicious […]

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FBI alert on Egregor ransomware highlighted affiliate cybercrime model

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An emerging strain of ransomware that was the subject of a recent FBI report is relying on an extortion technique in which attackers publish stolen data to a public website in the event that a victim organization refuses to meet hackers’ demands.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation in January warned that the gang behind the Egregor ransomware, first detected in September 2020, would compromise a victim’s network, then order a victim to print a physical copy of a ransom note spelling out a demand to pay a specific fee, otherwise risk their stolen data being made public. French and Ukrainian police took action against hackers who used the Egregor malware in February, reportedly arresting “several” suspects.  In its advisory, the bureau said that attackers can rent Egregor as a ransomware-as-a-service malware, and that it relies on other hacking tools as part of an affiliate model. Egregor frequently comes packaged with […]

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Hacker team-ups pose 2021 threat to financial industry, group cautions

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An information sharing group for the financial sector warned on Tuesday that banks will encounter growing danger this year from converging nation-state and criminal hackers, as well as supply chain risks and cross-border attacks. The report from the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center serves as a recap of threats the industry endured last year, as well as a forecast for 2021. Ransomware and other kinds of extortion attacks were among the biggest hazards for the financial services industry last year, FS-ISAC said. The organization said it expects further use of the increasingly common ransomware method of hackers leaking partial data to incentivize higher victim payments, and it said that more than 100 financial companies received distributed denial-of-service extortion threats last year. The organization also suggested that state-sponsored groups would leverage access or other techniques established by financially motivated scammers to boost their own operations. FS-ISAC did not point […]

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Top insurer CNA disconnects systems after cyberattack

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CNA, one of the U.S.’s top providers of cybersecurity insurance, is struggling with a cyberattack that prompted it to disconnect its systems from its network. Its website hasn’t been working for the last couple days, and at press time displayed the message, “The attack caused a network disruption and impacted certain CNA systems, including corporate email.” The Chicago-based firm reported more than $10 billion in revenue in 2020, and is in the top 15 U.S. property and casualty insurers and top 10 U.S. providers of cyber insurance, according to recent measurements. If the attack proves to include policyholder data, a cyber insurance industry expert warned, it could enable particularly devastating further incidents that hackers could use as leverage in extortion attempts. If that’s the case, CNA said, it will keep customers updated. The company said it discovered the intrusion on March 21, adding that it is working with forensics experts […]

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Federal advisories detail bitcoin payments to ransomware gangs, urgency of threat

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Ransomware victims paid attackers at least $144.35 million in bitcoin between 2013 and 2019, according to a recent Federal Bureau of Investigation bulletin that likely fails to account for millions of dollars.  The figure, published in a Feb. 4 advisory from the bureau, is based on the financial losses than ransomware victims reported to U.S. law enforcement over a six-year span in which digital extortion evolved from a rare corporate annoyance to a global black market. Victimized organizations often do not report ransomware payments to the FBI, and hackers in recent months have demanded tens of millions of dollars from breached firms. U.S. insurers similarly have tried to gather information about the frequency, size and severity of digital crime sprees.  FBI officials publicized the figure as part of a National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force fact sheet aimed at raising awareness about the ideal prevention and responses practices to ransomware. […]

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Ransomware attacks hit event-management, wireless technology firms

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A Washington, D.C.-area event-management firm and a Canadian wireless technology provider are dealing with separate ransomware incidents — a reminder of a digital scourge that costs U.S. businesses many millions of dollars a year. The incidents come as the Department of Homeland Security has undertaken a new initiative, backed by $25 million in additional funding, to combat a steady stream of ransomware attacks. Ransomware attackers encrypted the systems of the events firm, Spargo Inc., on March 14, according to a notification sent by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA), a Spargo client. Law enforcement personnel are investigating the incident, which may have exposed the phone numbers and physical and email addresses of some people who have attended AFCEA events, according to the notification. AFCEA hosts popular government and industry events that U.S. military officers regularly attend. The ransomware incident does not appear to have involved more sensitive information […]

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Energy giant Shell impacted in Accellion hack

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Oil and gas company Shell is the latest organization to get caught up in the hack that targeted IT provider Accellion’s file-sharing platform, the energy company says. The suspected criminal hackers behind the breach, who have gone after victims around the world using vulnerabilities in Accellion’s file transfer application (FTA), have accessed some personal data as well as data belonging to Shell stakeholders and subsidiaries, the company said on March 16. Shell had used the FTA to securely transfer large files. The incident appears to have only impacted the Accellion file transfer service. Shell claims there is “no evidence” so far that the incident has affected Shell’s IT system itself. Shell is working with authorities and regulators to investigate the incident, the firm said. The list of companies that use Accellion’s FTA that have fallen victim to the Accellion hack continues growing by the day. A Michigan-based savings bank and […]

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Two Infraud members sentenced for role in $568 million crime gang, US says

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A U.S. federal judge has sentenced two men — one from Russia, the other from North Macedonia — to prison terms of 10 and five years, respectively, for their role in a $568 million cybercriminal ring that stole payment cards and personal data from around the world. Both Sergey Medvedev of Russia and Marko Leopard of North Macedonia had pleaded guilty last year to a racketeering conspiracy, the U.S. Justice Department said in announcing the sentencing Friday. The jail time is the latest in a series of moves by U.S. prosecutors against the once-powerful crime ring, known as Infraud, which Medvedev allegedly co-founded. At its height, Infraud had more than 10,000 members and became a go-to place for “carding,” or buying things online with stolen credit card data. But a U.S. indictment of 36 of the organization’s affiliates in 2018, and subsequent arrest of 13 alleged members, effectively put Infraud out of […]

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New global model needed to dismantle ransomware gangs, experts warn

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Ransomware gangs are making a killing — they’re encrypting data at schools and hospitals around the world at an alarming rate, and they’re raking in hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth doing it, by some counts. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Security experts and former diplomats are in the early stages urging governments to work together to create a different kind of world — one with fewer examples of hackers taking data hostage or knocking organizations offline to demand ransoms or extortion fees, and one in which hackers are held accountable for targeting vulnerable organizations. Government officials increasingly have been working together to tamp down on malicious cyber activity in recent years, as evidenced by a European Union sanctions regime focused on hacking rolled out in the past year, and a 2015 agreement among United Nations members that cyberattacks intended to damage critical infrastructure are off limits. But […]

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NFT digital art is already attracting hackers

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Users of the digital art marketplace Nifty Gateway reported hackers had taken over their accounts and stolen artwork worth thousands of dollars over the weekend. Some users reported their entire accounts of digital certificates of authenticity for digital assets — known as non-fungible tokens (NFTs or “nifities”) — were drained over the weekend. But even after changing their passwords, some users said the hackers weren’t kicked out of their accounts. Some reported that the digital assets stolen from their accounts were then sold on the chat application Discord or on Twitter. Others users reported the intruders also stole their credit card information and began using it to make purchases of other art to the tune of $20,000. Nifty Gateway, a marketplace where users can buy, sell and display digital items, said in a statement that it encourages users to use two-factor authentication (2FA) to prevent account takeovers and hacking, noting […]

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