Security News > 2021 > November
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has responded with mild indignation to the USA's decision to revoke the operating licence that allowed China Telcom to operate in the land of the free. In a Wednesday statement, the Ministry accused the USA of using national security as a pretext for banning Chinese companies, complained that evidence of China Telecom's alleged misdeeds has not been furnished, and that the ban breaches international trade rules.
The U.S. Commerce Department on Wednesday added four companies, including Israel-based spyware companies NSO Group and Candiru, to a list of entities engaging in "Malicious cyber activities." The agency said the two companies were added to the list based on evidence that "These entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers."
The U.S. Commerce Department on Wednesday added four companies, including Israel-based spyware companies NSO Group and Candiru, to a list of entities engaging in "Malicious cyber activities." The agency said the two companies were added to the list based on evidence that "These entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers."
Facebook's newly-rebranded parent company Meta on Tuesday announced plans to discontinue its decade-old "Face Recognition" system and delete a massive trove of more than a billion users' facial recognition templates as part of a wider initiative to limit the use of the technology across its products. The Menlo Park tech giant described the about-face as "One of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology's history."
Facebook's newly-rebranded parent company Meta on Tuesday announced plans to discontinue its decade-old "Face Recognition" system and delete a massive trove of more than a billion users' facial recognition templates as part of a wider initiative to limit the use of the technology across its products. The Menlo Park tech giant described the about-face as "One of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology's history."
An analysis of new samples of BlackMatter ransomware for Windows and Linux has revealed the extent to which the operators have continually added new features and encryption capabilities in successive iterations over a three-month period. According to security researchers from Microsoft's counter-ransomware unit, DarkSide and its BlackMatter rebrand is the handiwork of a cybercrime group tracked as FIN7, which was recently unmasked operating a front company named Bastion Secure to lure tech professionals with the goal of launching ransomware attacks.
An analysis of new samples of BlackMatter ransomware for Windows and Linux has revealed the extent to which the operators have continually added new features and encryption capabilities in successive iterations over a three-month period. No fewer than 10 Windows and two Linux versions of the ransomware have been observed in the wild to date, Group-IB threat researcher Andrei Zhdanov said in a report shared with The Hacker News, pointing out the changes in the implementation of the ChaCha20 encryption algorithm used to encrypt the contents of the files.
The US Department of Justice has indicted a suspected Twitter hacker known as 'PlugWalkJoe' for also stealing $784,000 worth of cryptocurrency using SIM swap attacks. SIM swap attacks are when threat actors take control of targets' phone numbers by porting them to their own device's SIM card.
The US government's Dept of Commerce on Wednesday sanctioned four companies in Israel, Russia, and Singapore for selling software used to break into computer systems and by foreign governments to suppress dissent. "The United States is committed to aggressively using export controls to hold companies accountable that develop, traffic, or use technologies to conduct malicious activities that threaten the cybersecurity of members of civil society, dissidents, government officials, and organizations here and abroad," said US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo in a statement.
A new bad actor called Tortilla is running the campaign, and most affected users are in the U.S. Cisco Talos has a warning out for U.S. companies about a new variant of the Babuk ransomware. Security researchers Chetan Raghuprasad, Vanja Svajcer and Caitlin Huey describe the new threat in a Talos Intelligence blog post.