Security News
The White House's second International Counter Ransomware Initiative summit has concluded, and this year the 36-nation group has made clear it intends to crack down on how cryptocurrencies are used to finance ransomware operations. Last year's summit ended with far fewer actionable, concrete steps in this direction, concluding with a joint statement indicating "Countering illicit finance" was a priority without stating in specific terms that the Countering Ransomware Initiative was focused on cryptocurrencies.
India's Home Ministry has asked state governments to crack down on illegal lending apps it says have led to "Multiple suicides by citizens owing to harassment, blackmail, and harsh recovery methods." A letter sent last week states: "Large numbers of complaints have been reported across India pertaining to illegal digital lending apps that provide short-term loans or micro credits at exorbitant interest rates with processing or hidden charges, especially to vulnerable and low-income people and use the borrower's confidential personal data like contacts, location, photos/videos for blackmail/harassment."
The new 'Erbium' information-stealing malware is being distributed as fake cracks and cheats for popular video games to steal victims' credentials and cryptocurrency wallets. Erbium is a new Malware-as-a-Service that provides subscribers with a new information-stealing malware that is gaining popularity in the cybercrime community thanks to its extensive functionality, customer support, and competitive pricing.
Authorities in Sihanoukville, Cambodia announced on Sunday that a raid last week uncovered evidence of forced labor cybercrime syndicates that participated in human trafficking and torture. The five-day operation led to the discovery of 130 Chinese immigrants and 11 from Vietnamese, mostly all male, who had entered the country illegally, with 262 more foreigners working without permits.
A developer says he was able to run his own software on his car infotainment hardware after discovering the vehicle's manufacturer had secured its system using keys that were not only publicly known but had been lifted from programming examples. Turns out the encryption key in that script is the first AES 128-bit CBC example key listed in a NIST document.
Facebook parent company Meta disclosed that it took action against two espionage operations in South Asia that leveraged its social media platforms to distribute malware to potential targets. The first set of activities is what the company described as "Persistent and well-resourced" and undertaken by a hacking group tracked under the moniker Bitter APT targeting individuals in New Zealand, India, Pakistan and the U.K. "Bitter used various malicious tactics to target people online with social engineering and infect their devices with malware," Meta said in its Quarterly Adversarial Threat Report.
A new version of the Amadey Bot malware is distributed through the SmokeLoader malware, using software cracks and keygen sites as lures. Amadey Bot is a malware strain discovered four years ago, capable of performing system reconnaissance, stealing information, and loading additional payloads.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission warned this week that it will crack down on tech companies' illegal use and sharing of highly sensitive data and false claims about data anonymization. "While many consumers may happily offer their location data in exchange for real-time crowd-sourced advice on the fastest route home, they likely think differently about having their thinly-disguised online identity associated with the frequency of their visits to a therapist or cancer doctor," FTC's Kristin Cohen said.
Kaspersky has found a vulnerability in the Yanluowang ransomware encryption algorithm and, as a result, released a free decryptor tool to help victims of this software nasty recover their files. Yanluowang, named after a Chinese deity and underworld judge, is a type of ransomware that has been used against financial institutions and other firms in America, Brazil, and Turkey as well as a smaller number of organizations in Sweden and China, Kaspersky said yesterday.
Threat actors have launched a new marketplace called Industrial Spy that sells stolen data from breached companies, as well as offering free stolen data to its members. While stolen data marketplaces are not new, instead of extorting companies and scaring them with GDPR fines, Industrial Spy promotes itself as a marketplace where businesses can purchase their competitors' data to gain access to trade secrets, manufacturing diagrams, accounting reports, and client databases.