Collaborate Disseminate
A California man who pleaded guilty Tuesday to causing dozens of swatting attacks — including a deadly incident in Kansas last year — now faces 20 or more years in prison. Continue reading Calif. Man Pleads Guilty in Fatal Swatting Case, Faces 20+ Years in Prison
The Department of Justice on Thursday announced criminal charges against seven Russian military officers for a wide-ranging hacking operation against sporting and anti-doping agencies in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Russian athletes were barred from representing their country at the 2018 Winter Olympics over alleged doping, and the indictment accuses the members of the GRU, Russia’s intelligence directorate, of using cyber-operations to obtain private health data on athletes at anti-doping agencies and then publicly leaking the data. Russian operatives dumped the private medical information of more than 250 athletes on social and traditional media toward that end, according to John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security. “All of this was done to undermine those organizations’ efforts to ensure the integrity of the Olympic and other games,” Demers said Thursday in announcing the charges. The indictment also accuses GRU hackers of targeting the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of […]
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Citing “extraordinary cooperation” with the government, a court in Alaska on Tuesday sentenced three men to probation, community service and fines for their admitted roles in authoring and using “Mirai,” a potent malware strain used in countless attacks designed to knock Web sites offline — including an enormously powerful attack in 2016 that sidelined this Web site for nearly four days. Continue reading Mirai Botnet Authors Avoid Jail Time
The DoJ said a DPRK spy, Park Jin-hyok, was involved in “a conspiracy to conduct multiple destructive cyberattacks around the world.” Continue reading U.S. Ties Lazarus to North Korea and Major Hacking Conspiracy
The FBI seized a domain used to communicate with 500,000 infected routers Wednesday, cutting off a massive botnet that was possibly being used for a forthcoming cyberattack aimed at Ukraine. The Department of Justice obtained a seizure order Wednesday that allowed U.S. law enforcement to seize “toknowall.com,” which was used as the command and control in the “VPNFilter” botnet. VPNFilter was made public Tuesday, when it was announced that a combination of at least three groups — Cisco’s cybersecurity unit Talos, the non-profit information sharing group Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA) and U.S. law enforcement — have all been quietly notifying companies about the early stages of a potentially expansive cyberattack against Ukraine. In a seizure order made public Wednesday, the Department of Justice pinned the botnet on APT28, the hacking group known as “Fancy Bear.” The group is responsible for a number of high-profile hacks, including the 2016 hack of […]
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The Justice Department filed motions in district court Monday to dismiss two lawsuits brought by Russian cybersecurity and anti-virus provider Kaspersky. It is the latest move in a protracted legal battle. All U.S. federal agencies have been prohibited from using any hardware, software, or devices developed by Moscow-based Kaspersky, following President Donald Trump’s signing of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Dec. 12, 2017. Kaspersky claims that by prohibiting the use of their products, Congress has violated the Bill of Attainder Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits the singling out of a private entity for punishment without sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. But in the motion filed by Assistant Attorney General Chad Readler, the Justice Department argues that Kaspersky has neglected to consider the weeks of congressional meetings and debates that preceded the decision to prohibit their products. Lawmakers have had concerns about Kaspersky since at least April 2017, […]
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The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday unsealed the guilty pleas of two men first identified in January 2017 by KrebsOnSecurity as the likely co-authors of Mirai, a malware strain that remotely enslaves so-called “Internet of Things” devices such as security cameras, routers, and digital video recorders for use in large scale attacks designed to knock Web sites and entire networks offline (including multiple major attacks against this site). Continue reading Mirai IoT Botnet Co-Authors Plead Guilty
A group of Chinese hackers recently indicted by the Department of Justice were involved in an international cyber espionage operation connected to a foreign intelligence agency, security researchers tell CyberScoop. On Monday, senior Justice Department officials announced eight relevant criminal charges against the Chinese hackers. Although the indictment was originally issued in September, it was sealed until Monday. The criminal activity allegedly dates as far back as 2011. Court documents describe that Chinese nationals Wu Yingzhuo, Dong Hao and Xia Lei hacked into and stole data from several American companies, including Siemens AG, Moody’s Analytics and GPS technology company Trimble. The trio worked together at a company named Boyusec, also known as the Guangzhou Bo Yu Information Technology Co. Business registration records show that Wu and Dong are executives at Boyusec. Conservative news outlet The Washington Free Beacon reported in November 2016 that Boyusec, which it described as a Chinese cybersecurity firm, […]
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Continue reading DOJ reveals indictment against Chinese cyber spies that stole U.S. business secrets
If you, a friend or loved one lost money in a scam involving Western Union, some or all of those funds may be recoverable thanks to a more than half-billion dollar program set up by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Continue reading Fund Targets Victims Scammed Via Western Union
American companies that are victims of a data breach ought to report the crimes and work with law enforcement because doing so could change the unfriendly public narrative that the government will look to start charging companies with crimes, federal officials told business executives this week. Acting Assistant Attorney General Dana Boente, the current head of the Justice Department’s national security division, pitched industry leaders in Washington on what he called “the business case” for cooperation with law enforcement in the wake of an online intrusion. “I recognize that your decision to call the FBI, to work with the Justice Department, is often your decision: It’s a choice,” Boente said in a keynote address to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Sixth Annual Cybersecurity Summit. “And what I want to do today is lay out that there are real benefits to making that choice and the risks shouldn’t be overstated.” He argued that — for companies victimized by […]
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