Security News
Chinese hackers stole tens of thousands of emails from U.S. State Department accounts after breaching Microsoft's cloud-based Exchange email platform in May. During a recent Senate staff briefing, U.S. State Department officials disclosed that the attackers stole at least 60,000 emails from Outlook accounts belonging to State Department officials stationed in East Asia, the Pacific, and Europe, as Reuters first reported. Microsoft did not disclose specific details regarding the affected organizations, government agencies, or countries impacted by this email breach.
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Kosi Goodness Simon-Ebo, a 29-year-old Nigerian national extradited from Canada to the United States last April, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering through business email compromise. According to the plea agreement, the scammers had a high success ratio of roughly 1 to 7, making one million out of the almost seven million they attempted to steal.
Sending an email with a forged address is easier than previously thought, due to flaws in the process that allows email forwarding, according to a research team led by computer scientists at the University of California San Diego. It's called forwarding-based spoofing, and researchers found that they can send email messages impersonating these organizations, bypassing the safeguards deployed by email providers such as Gmail and Outlook.
Mistakes were made, lessons learned, stuff now fixed, says Windows maker Remember that internal super-secret Microsoft security key that China stole and used to break into US government email...
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Suspected Chinese hackers disproportionately targeted and breached government and government-linked organizations worldwide in recent attacks targeting a Barracuda Email Security Gateway zero-day, with a focus on entities across the Americas. Barracuda warned customers that the vulnerability was being exploited to breach ESG appliances on May 20, when it also patched all vulnerable devices remotely.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning that Barracuda Networks Email Security Gateway appliances patched against a recently disclosed critical flaw continue to be at risk of potential compromise from suspected Chinese hacking groups. It also deemed the fixes as "Ineffective" and that it "Continues to observe active intrusions and considers all affected Barracuda ESG appliances to be compromised and vulnerable to this exploit."
The FBI has warned owners of Barracuda Email Security Gateway appliances the devices are likely undergoing attack by snoops linked to China, and removing the machines from service remains the safest course of action. On Wednesday, the FBI pushed that recommendation in a flash alert [PDF] that stated it "Strongly advises all affected ESG appliances be isolated and replaced immediately."
Cybercriminals employ artificial intelligence to create complex email threats like phishing and business email compromise attacks, while modern email security systems use AI to counter these attacks, according to Perception Point and Osterman Research. Cybercriminals have shown rapid adoption of AI tools to their favor with 91.1% of organizations reporting that they have already encountered email attacks that have been enhanced by AI, and 84.3% expecting that AI will continue to be utilized to circumvent existing security systems.