Collaborate Disseminate
Financial institutions, cyber-insurance firms, and security firms have all been put on notice by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Continue reading Researchers Mixed on Sanctions for Ransomware Negotiators
Anyone who helps ransomware victims pay off hackers who are under U.S. sanctions could face stiff punishment themselves, the Treasury Department said Thursday. The advisory from Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control served notice to financial institutions and cyber insurance companies — as well as cybersecurity firms that help ransomware victims identify and respond to attacks — that they could suffer fines if they aided payments to attackers from places like Russia, North Korea or Iran that are on the U.S. sanctions list. And OFAC indicated it would be inclined to be strict about it: Those civil penalties could be levied against companies that didn’t know they were facilitating ransom payments to hackers on its sanctions list. “OFAC may impose civil penalties for sanctions violations based on strict liability, meaning that a person subject to U.S. jurisdiction may be held civilly liable even if it did not know or have reason […]
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Companies victimized by ransomware and firms that facilitate negotiations with ransomware extortionists could face steep fines from the U.S. federal government if the crooks who profit from the attack are already under economic sanctions, the Treasury Department warned today. Continue reading Ransomware Victims That Pay Up Could Incur Steep Fines from Uncle Sam
The U.S. Secret Service is pulling in outside expertise from the private sector and U.S. Cyber Command as it weighs changes to its investigative methods in an attempt to keep pace with international hackers. The engagement with Cyber Command, the Pentagon’s offensive cyber unit, is focused on learning from the military’s experience with transnational cybercriminals, a Secret Service official told CyberScoop. The Secret Service’s efforts to consult with private sector experts, meanwhile, is focused on specifically overhauling the agency’s investigative practices. The effort to consult with outside expertise comes as part of a recognition that the Secret Service lacks the latest techniques needed to root out financially motivated hackers. To formalize its interest in tapping into the private sector’s understanding of scammers’ latest tactics, the agency earlier this year established an advisory group composed of cybersecurity practitioners from the private sector, academia, and U.S. government, as CyberScoop first reported. Known as the Cyber Investigations Advisory Board (CIAB), the group met last week […]
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The Department of Justice on Thursday unsealed an indictment charging three Iranian men in connection with a scheme to steal critical data from U.S. aerospace and satellite companies — the latest in a string of U.S. charges against suspected Iranian hackers. U.S. prosecutors accused the three men of “engaging in a coordinated campaign of identity theft and hacking” on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The scheme allegedly spanned more than three years, and a targeted list of over 1,8000 online accounts comprising aerospace and satellite companies and government organizations, from the U.S. to the United Kingdom to Israel. The charges followed sanctions from the U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday against dozens of Iranians, including alleged members of hacking group known as APT39, for allegedly targeting Iranian dissidents and journalists. It’s the latest update in an aggressive crackdown on Iranian hacking this week that has been a coordinated effort across multiple U.S. […]
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A U.S. federal grand jury has indicted two Russian men in connection with an email scam that defrauded American cryptocurrency exchanges out of nearly $17 million. The Department of Justice on Wednesday unsealed charges against the Russian nationals, Danil Potekhin and Dmitrii Karasavidi, accusing them of using a combination of phishing messages and spoofed websites to steal virtual currency from users at three cryptocurrency exchanges. The fraud effort netted attackers $16.8 million from 2017 to 2018, according to the Justice Department. A grand jury returned the charges in February. By directing victims to visit financial websites that seemed legitimate, the attackers duped traders into entering their usernames and passwords into sites under their control. After gathering the credentials from their malicious site, Potekhin and Karasavidi directed funds from those accounts into their own, prosecutors said. The U.S. Treasury Department also announced Wednesday it has enacted sanctions against the two men, forbidding […]
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The Trump administration sanctioned four Russia-linked individuals for their efforts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections, the Treasury Department announced Thursday. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is specifically sanctioning Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian politician who has been an “active Russian agent for over a decade,” for his efforts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections in the U.S., it said in a release. Derkach waged a covert influence campaign that relied on edited audio taps and other materials meant to discredit U.S. officials, and sway public opinion, prior to Election Day, according to the Treasury Department. “Derkach has directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election,” OFAC said in the release. OFAC is also sanctioning three members of the Russian government’s social media troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, […]
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A group of Democratic senators is urging the U.S. Treasury Department to impose sanctions on those involved in efforts to interfere in the 2020 elections so far, including those from Russia. “We write to urge you immediately to impose sanctions on individuals, entities and governmental actors seeking to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections,” the 11 lawmakers, including Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, wrote in a letter Thursday to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “Congress mandated a broad range of sanctions tools, and it is long past time for the administration to send a direct message to President Putin: the U.S. will respond immediately and forcefully to continuing election interference by the government of the Russian Federation and its surrogates, to punish, deter and substantially increase the economic and political costs of such interference.” The U.S. intelligence community has assessed Russia is currently working to “publicly denigrate” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, according to a statement the Office […]
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A group of Democratic senators is urging the U.S. Treasury Department to impose sanctions on those involved in efforts to interfere in the 2020 elections so far, including those from Russia. “We write to urge you immediately to impose sanctions on individuals, entities and governmental actors seeking to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections,” the 11 lawmakers, including Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, wrote in a letter Thursday to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “Congress mandated a broad range of sanctions tools, and it is long past time for the administration to send a direct message to President Putin: the U.S. will respond immediately and forcefully to continuing election interference by the government of the Russian Federation and its surrogates, to punish, deter and substantially increase the economic and political costs of such interference.” The U.S. intelligence community has assessed Russia is currently working to “publicly denigrate” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, according to a statement the Office […]
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The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned two Chinese nationals Monday for laundering stolen money obtained through a North Korean government-backed hack of a cryptocurrency exchange in 2018. Specifically, the Treasury Department sanctioned Tian Yinyin and Li Jiadong for “having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of” Lazarus Group, a hacking group the U.S. government has previously linked with the North Korean government, according to the Treasury Department release. The two also provided that support to a “malicious cyber-enabled activity.” The Treasury Department has previously singled out Lazarus Group for its heists. Last September, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Lazarus Group and two sub-groups for their activities targeting Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) and stealing cash and customer information from ATMs. This is the first time the U.S. government is formally sanctioning Chinese nationals with […]
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