Security News

Companies critical to U.S. national interests will now have to report when they're hacked or they pay ransomware, according to new rules approved by Congress. The reporting requirement legislation was approved by the House and the Senate on Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by President Joe Biden soon.

French video game company Ubisoft on Friday confirmed it was a victim of a "Cyber security incident," causing temporary disruptions to its games, systems, and services. The Montreuil-headquartered firm said that an investigation into the breach was underway and that it has initiated a company-wide password reset as a precautionary measure.

Meta Platforms' WhatsApp and Cloudflare have banded together for a new initiative called Code Verify to validate the authenticity of the messaging service's web app on desktop computers. Available in the form of a Chrome and Edge browser extension, the open-source add-on is designed to "Automatically verif[y] the authenticity of the WhatsApp Web code being served to your browser," Facebook said in a statement.

Russia says some of its federal agencies' websites were compromised in a supply chain attack on Tuesday after unknown attackers hacked the stats widget used to track the number of visitors by multiple government agencies. The list of sites impacted in the attack includes the websites of the Energy Ministry, the Federal State Statistics Service, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the Federal Bailiff Service, the Federal Antimonopoly Service, the Culture Ministry, and other Russian state agencies.

The Security Service of Ukraine said today "Enemy" hackers are using compromised local government and regional authorities' websites to push rumors that Ukraine surrendered and signed a peace treaty with Russia. "WARNING! ANOTHER FAKE! The enemy has broken into some sites of regional authorities and local governments and spreads through them lies about the alleged 'capitulation and signing of a peace treaty with Russia'," the SSU said, as Reuters first reported.

Twitter account of former intelligence specialist, Reality Winner was hacked over the weekend by threat actors looking to target journalists at prominent media organizations. Hackers took over Winner's verified Twitter account and changed the profile name to "Feedback Team" to impersonate Twitter staff before sending out suspicious DMs to verified users.

Similarities have been unearthed between the Dridex general-purpose malware and a little-known ransomware strain called Entropy, suggesting that the operators are continuing to rebrand their extortion operations under a different name. "The similarities are in the software packer used to conceal the ransomware code, in the malware subroutines designed to find and obfuscate commands, and in the subroutines used to decrypt encrypted text," cybersecurity firm Sophos said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

The Cuba ransomware operation is exploiting Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities to gain initial access to corporate networks and encrypt devices. Cybersecurity firm Mandiant tracks the ransomware gang as UNC2596 and the ransomware itself as COLDDRAW. However, the ransomware is more commonly known as Cuba, which is how BleepingComputer will reference them throughout this article.

Intelligence agencies in the U.K. and the U.S. disclosed details of a new botnet malware called Cyclops Blink that's been attributed to the Russian-backed Sandworm hacking group and deployed in attacks dating back to 2019. "Cyclops Blink appears to be a replacement framework for the VPNFilter malware exposed in 2018, which exploited network devices, primarily small office/home office routers, and network-attached storage devices," the agencies said.

BleepingComputer has confirmed Element Vape, a prominent online seller of e-cigarettes and vaping kits is serving a credit card skimmer on its live site, likely after getting hacked. With its presence across the U.S. and Canada, Element Vape sells e-cigarettes, vaping devices, e-liquids, and CBD products in both retail outlets and on their online store.