Collaborate Disseminate
Someone clearly isn’t very impressed with Vladimir Putin, as the Russian economy continues to tank in the wake of sanctions. Continue reading Hacked electronic sign declares “Putin is a dickhead” as Russian ruble slumps
The former president said the U.S. and other democracies helped disinformation flourish by growing complacent.
The post Obama says he underestimated the threats posed by disinformation appeared first on CyberScoop.
Continue reading Obama says he underestimated the threats posed by disinformation
Aleksei Burkov, a cybercriminal who long operated two of Russia’s most exclusive underground hacking forums, was arrested in 2015 by Israeli authorities. The Russian government fought Burkov’s extradition to the U.S. for four years — even arresting and jailing an Israeli woman to force a prisoner swap. That effort failed: Burkov was sent to America, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to nine years in prison. But a little more than a year later, he was quietly released and deported back to Russia. Now some Republican lawmakers are asking why a Russian hacker once described as “an asset of supreme importance” was allowed to shorten his stay. Continue reading Lawmakers Probe Early Release of Top RU Cybercrook
China’s march toward chip independence is of “great concern” and could have “broader impacts,” he said. It’s an issue that dovetails with the Russia-Ukraine war.
The post Cyber Command chief tells Congress chip shortage has national security implications appeared first on CyberScoop.
Continue reading Cyber Command chief tells Congress chip shortage has national security implications
Cybersecurity officials in Ukraine issued a warning Monday about yet another phishing attack using either compromised or spoofed government email addresses, the second such warning since Saturday. Monday’s alert warned of attackers targeting government institutions with malware-laced bait documents hosted on Discord that come to targets within emails from the National Health Service of Ukraine. The malware deploys a program called OutSteel that looks for certain file extensions and steals them, and also deploys a second malicious program called SaintBot. Monday’s bulletin comes two days after government officials there warned of compromised email accounts from the Ukrainian judiciary being used to target mostly Ukrainian government targets with malware hidden within phony court inquiries. Both operations come roughly two weeks after a cyberattack targeting Ukrainian government systems that wiped some computers and defaced the websites of dozens of agencies’ sites. All of the attacks are linked as part of “hybrid aggression, […]
The post Conversation with a top Ukrainian cyber official: What we know, what we don’t, what it means appeared first on CyberScoop.
The Russian government said today it arrested 14 people accused of working for “REvil,” a particularly aggressive ransomware group that has extorted hundreds of millions of dollars from victim organizations. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said the actions were taken in response to a request from U.S. officials, but many experts believe the crackdown is part of an effort to reduce tensions over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to station 100,000 troops along the nation’s border with Ukraine. Continue reading At Request of U.S., Russia Rounds Up 14 REvil Ransomware Affiliates
The Russian approach to hacking shifted considerably over the past year, with state-sponsored attacks on commercial organizations dropping off even as the local cybercrime scene dominated the field, CrowdStrike said in a report Wednesday. From July 2020 to June of this year, Russian state-backed hacking outfits accounted for only a tiny sliver of nation-sponsored attacks aimed at commercial enterprises detected by the cyber firm’s threat hunting service, at 1% compared to China’s 69%. (The figure represents the findings from only one threat intelligence firm, and does not account for hacking campaigns that CrowdStrike might have missed.) Meanwhile, the suspected Russia-based hacking group that CrowdStrike calls Wizard Spider, and that has used the Ryuk ransomware since 2018, was responsible for double the number of detected attempted intrusions of any other cybercrime gang over the same period. While CrowdStrike didn’t have comparison figures on the percentages of state-sponsored attacks on commercial organizations […]
The post Russian cybercrime continues as government-backed attacks on companies dwindle, CrowdStrike says appeared first on CyberScoop.
The U.S. is “more likely” to end up in a “real shooting war with a major power” over a cyber incident than other kinds of conflict, President Joe Biden suggested on Tuesday. “We’ve seen how cyber threats, including ransomware attacks, increasingly are able to cause damage and disruption to the real world,” he said at a speech at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia. “And it’s increasing exponentially — the capabilities.” While Biden delivered his speech before intelligence personnel, at least one of his intended recipients appeared to be Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Biden administration has been talking tough about Russia providing safe haven for ransomware gangs believed to be responsible for headline-making attacks on Colonial Pipeline, JBS and Kaseya. Biden has pressed that message to Putin directly as recently as July. Russia has rejected U.S. suggestions of wrongdoing. “I can’t […]
The post Biden says ‘shooting war’ could break out with foreign heavyweights over cyberattacks appeared first on CyberScoop.
President Joe Biden said he gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a list of 16 critical infrastructure sectors, from energy to water, that should not be the subject of malicious cyber activity during a meeting between the two men in Geneva on Wednesday. The two heads of state also agreed to task cybersecurity experts from each government “to work on specific understandings about what’s off limits and to follow up on specific [cyber incidents] that originate in either of our countries,” Biden said at press conference after a roughly four-hour meeting with Putin. “I talked about the proposition that certain critical infrastructure should be off limits to attack, period, by cyber or any other means,” Biden said. It was not immediately clear if the list of critical infrastructure sectors that Biden referenced corresponds with the 16 sectors designated by the U.S. government. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to […]
The post Biden says he gave Putin list of 16 sectors that should be off limits to hacking appeared first on CyberScoop.
Continue reading Biden says he gave Putin list of 16 sectors that should be off limits to hacking
The U.S. Justice Department did not ask Russian law enforcement for help in tracking down the perpetrators of the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack because Moscow’s history of harboring cybercriminals essentially makes it a waste of time, according to a senior department official. “I think we’ve reached the stage, today, where there’s very little point in doing so,” said John Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security. “We have made those requests in the past.” The Russian government is “not just tolerating this,” Demers said at CyberTalks, presented by CyberScoop. “They’re actively getting in the way of U.S. law enforcement efforts to combat this type of hacking,” he added, referring to previous Russian efforts to block U.S. requests to extradite accused hackers from other countries. The remarks were pre-recorded on June 3. The Justice Department did not answer follow-up questions about possible Russian cooperation in the weeks since. The Russian […]
The post DOJ didn’t ask for Russia’s help tracking down Colonial Pipeline hackers, senior official says appeared first on CyberScoop.