Category Archives: netherlands

International sting shuts down ‘favorite’ VPN of cybercriminals

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The latest international action against cybercrime infrastructure involves the takedown of a virtual private network (VPN) used to hide the activities of ransomware gangs and other illegal operations. The FBI and European police announced the sting against the Safe-Inet service Tuesday morning. The VPN company was billed as “cybercriminals’ favorite” by Europol. The FBI said three Web domains associated with the service — safe-inet.com, safe-inet.net and insorg.org — had been seized and then plastered with notices from police. Officials said that taking down Safe-Inet was disruptive to major active cybercriminal campaigns, but they did not specify what those were. “Active for over a decade, Safe-Inet was being used by some of the world’s biggest cybercriminals, such as the ransomware operators responsible for ransomware, E-skimming breaches and other forms of serious cybercrime,” according to a news release from Europol, the top police agency for the European Union. “This VPN service was […]

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Ransomware gang Egregor publishes details from HR firm Randstand following hack

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A cybercriminal group breached the IT systems of Randstad, one of the largest head-hunting companies in the world, and published some internal corporate data in an apparent extortion attempt, the firm said Thursday. Netherlands-based Randstad pointed the finger at the criminal gang behind Egregor, a nascent type of ransomware that’s struck multiple organizations in recent weeks. The attackers gained access “to our global IT environment and to certain data, in particular related to our operations in the US, Poland, Italy and France,” Randstad said in a press release. “A limited number of servers were impacted.” Randstad, which employed more than 38,000 people last year and reported more than $28 billion in revenue, said it was still identifying what data had been accessed. Law enforcement and third-party investigators are also involved in the matter, the company said. “We believe the incident started with a phishing email that initiated malicious software to […]

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Chinese cyber power is neck-and-neck with U.S., Harvard research finds

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As conventional wisdom goes, experts tend to rank the U.S ahead of China, U.K., Iran, North Korea, Russia, in terms of how strong it is when it comes to cyberspace. But a new study from Harvard University’s Belfer Center shows that China has closed the gap on the U.S. in three key categories: surveillance, cyber defense, and its efforts to build up its commercial cyber sector. “A lot of people, Americans in particular, will think that the U.S., the U.K., France, Israel are more advanced than China when it comes to cyber power,” Eric Rosenbach, the Co-Director of Harvard’s Belfer Center, told CyberScoop. “Our study shows it’s just not the case and that China is very sophisticated and almost at a peer level with the U.S.” Overall, China’s cyber power is only second to the U.S., according to the research, which was shared exclusively with CyberScoop. But the study also found […]

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Politician amongst those who had their direct messages accessed during Twitter hack

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More information has emerged related to last week’s attack which saw a number of high profile Twitter accounts hijacked for the purposes of spreading a cryptocurrency scam, as it is revealed a far-right politician had his private messages accessed.
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Politician amongst those who had their direct messages accessed during Twitter hack

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More information has emerged related to last week’s attack which saw a number of high profile Twitter accounts hijacked for the purposes of spreading a cryptocurrency scam, as it is revealed a far-right politician had his private messages accessed.
Rea… Continue reading Politician amongst those who had their direct messages accessed during Twitter hack→

Mom, You Can’t Post Pictures of My Child—Because GDPR

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A grandmother is found guilty of violating GDPR—for posting photos of her grandchild without permission.
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TikTok’s handling of child privacy gets another watchdog’s attention

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Use of the kid-addicting, video-sharing app is exploding during lockdown, triggering yet another inquiry into how safe it is for young ones. Continue reading TikTok’s handling of child privacy gets another watchdog’s attention→

Dutch police orchestrate takedown of 15 DDoS-for-hire services

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Dutch law enforcement has shut down 15 DDoS-for-hire services that were used to run cyberattacks aimed at knocking websites and networks offline. Although they did not reveal the names of the DDoS-for-hire booters that they stopped, Police in The Netherlands were able to arrest a 19-year-old man from The Netherlands, who is suspected of orchestrating a DDoS attack against two websites that provide information on the coronavirus. The affected websites, MijnOverheid.nl and Overheid.nl, were unavailable for several hours on March 19 after being bombarded with traffic, according to the Dutch police. “We want to protect people and companies and make it increasingly difficult for cyber criminals to carry out a DDoS attack,” the head of the cyber crime team of the Central Netherlands police, Jeroen Niessen, said in a statement on the takedown. Dutch citizens may have found the interruptions to Overhead.nl particularly exasperating because the site is used as a “digital letterbox” […]

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From Hacker Hotel 2020: Badges, Sharks, Tentacles, Old-School Hacking, And Much More

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The North Sea in a winter storm is a spectacular sight, one of foam-crested waves and squalls driven on the gale. It’s not a place to spend a lot of time if you are a land-lubber, so to cross it twice in a few weeks must mean there is something …read more

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Dutch university pays $220,000 ransom to infamous Russian cybercrime ring

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The University of Maastricht in Holland has ended up paying a $220,000 ransom to a group of Russian hackers after an unwary employee fell for a phishing scam. The university was attacked with ransomware on Christmas Eve, 2019, a month after the employe… Continue reading Dutch university pays $220,000 ransom to infamous Russian cybercrime ring→