Security News
The US government has recommended a series of steps that critical infrastructure operators should take to prevent distributed-denial-of-service attacks. The joint guide, entitled Understanding and Responding to Distributed Denial-Of-Service Attacks [PDF], distinguishes between denial-of-service and DDoS attacks.
FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center has released its 2023 Internet Crime Report, which recorded a 22% increase in reported losses compared to 2022, amounting to a record of $12.5 billion. The number of relevant complaints submitted to the FBI in 2023 reached 880,000, 10% higher than the previous year, with the age group topping the report being people over 60, which shows how vulnerable older adults are to cybercrime.
"Cybercriminals continue to adjust their tactics, and the FBI has observed emerging ransomware trends, such as the deployment of multiple ransomware variants against the same victim and the use of data-destruction tactics to increase pressure on victims to negotiate," according to the IC3 report. Crooks had no qualms about infecting critical infrastructure organizations with ransomware.
The U.S. government is warning about the resurgence of BlackCat (aka ALPHV) ransomware attacks targeting the healthcare sector as recently as this month. "Since mid-December 2023, of the nearly 70...
Today, the FBI, CISA, and the Department of Health and Human Services warned U.S. healthcare organizations of targeted ALPHV/Blackcat ransomware attacks. Today's warning follows an April 2022 FBI flash alert and another advisory issued in December 2023 detailing the BlackCat cybercrime gang's activity since it surfaced in November 2021 as a suspected rebrand of the DarkSide and BlackMatter ransomware groups.
A Ukrainian national has pleaded guilty in the U.S. to his role in two different malware schemes, Zeus and IcedID, between May 2009 and February 2021. Vyacheslav Igorevich Penchukov (aka...
The FBI took down a botnet of small office/home office routers used by Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff to proxy malicious traffic and to target the United States and its allies in spearphishing and credential theft attacks. This network of hundreds of Ubiquiti Edge OS routers infected with Moobot malware was controlled by GRU Military Unit 26165, also tracked as APT28, Fancy Bear, and Sednit.
The FBI took down a botnet of small office/home office routers used by Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff in spearphishing and credential theft attacks targeting the United States and its allies. Subsequently, the GRU hackers leveraged the Moobot malware to deploy their own custom malicious tools, effectively repurposing the botnet into a cyber espionage tool with global reach.
The FBI dismantled the Warzone RAT malware operation, seizing infrastructure and arresting two individuals associated with the cybercrime operation. Warzone RAT is commodity malware created in 2018 that offers numerous features to aid cybercrime, including UAC bypass, hidden remote desktop, cookie and password stealing, keylogging, webcam recording, file operations, reverse proxy, remote shell, and process management.
Analysis The FBI's latest PR salvo, as it fights to preserve its warrantless snooping powers on Americans via FISA Section 702, is more big talk of cyberattacks by the Chinese government. During a US House subcommittee meeting last week on cyber threats from Beijing, FBI boss Christopher Wray told lawmakers that "702 is the greatest tool the FBI has to combat PRC hacking groups." PRC being People's Republic of China.