Security News
Facebook won a significant legal victory on Thursday when the judge hearing the lawsuit against Israeli spyware maker NSO Group declined to dismiss the case - and allowed the crucial discovery process to move forward. Last October, Facebook and its WhatsApp subsidiary sued NSO Group, and its Q Cyber Technologies affiliate, in the Northern District of California.
The Kremlin on Thursday denied claims by Britain that "Russian actors" sought to meddle in last year's general election and that Russian intelligence services most likely hacked coronavirus vaccine research. "We have no information on who could have hacked pharmaceutical companies and research centres in Britain," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the TASS news agency.
The Kremlin-backed APT29 crew, also known by a variety of other names such as Cozy Bear, Iron Hemlock, or The Dukes, depending on which threat intel company you're talking to that week, is believed by most reputable analysts to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the FSB, modern-day successor to the infamous Soviet KGB. NCSC ops director Paul Chichester said in a statement: "We condemn these despicable attacks against those doing vital work to combat the coronavirus pandemic." Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab added: "It is completely unacceptable that the Russian Intelligence Services are targeting those working to combat the coronavirus pandemic. While others pursue their selfish interests with reckless behaviour, the UK and its allies are getting on with the hard work of finding a vaccine and protecting global health."
Britain, the United States and Canada accused Russian hackers on Thursday of trying to steal information from researchers seeking a coronavirus vaccine, warning scientists and pharmaceutical companies to be alert for suspicious activity. Intelligence agencies in the three nations alleged that the hacking group APT29, also known as Cozy Bear and said to be part of the Russian intelligence services, is attacking academic and pharmaceutical research institutions involved in COVID-19 vaccine development.
The Twitter accounts of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and other celebrities were briefly taken over on Wednesday, along with the accounts of various cryptocurrency businesses and affiliated executives, to promote a Bitcoin scam. Twitter also silenced verified blue-tick accounts temporarily to prevent more abuse while it got to the bottom of the kerfuffle.
A Russian national accused of hacking into online platforms LinkedIn, Formspring, and Dropbox was found guilty by a United States jury last week. The man, Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin, 32, was arrested in 2016 in the Czech Republic, and remained incarcerated there for two years, before being extradited to the U.S. In 2016, U.S. authorities charged Nikulin with accessing without authorization the systems of LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring in 2012, using stolen employee credentials.
A new research has uncovered multiple critical reverse RDP vulnerabilities in Apache Guacamole, a popular remote desktop application used by system administrators to access and manage Windows and Linux machines remotely. The reported flaws could potentially let bad actors achieve full control over the Guacamole server, intercept, and control all other connected sessions.
A former Yahoo! employee who admitted to hacking into the accounts of thousands of users was sentenced last week to five years of probation. The man, Reyes Daniel Ruiz, 35, of Tracy, California, pleaded guilty in September 2019 to hacking roughly 6,000 Yahoo! accounts, looking for sexual photos and videos.
In a joint operation, European and British law enforcement agencies recently arrested hundreds of alleged drug dealers and other criminals after infiltrating into a global network of an encrypted chatting app that was used to plot drug deals, money laundering, extortions, and even murders. Dubbed EncroChat, the top-secret encrypted communication app comes pre-installed on a customized Android-based handset with GPS, camera, and microphone functionality removed for anonymity and security.
Bug bounty hunting is, at heart, a competitive market, and winner-takes-all is the easiest way for a vendor to avoid the problem of two researchers covertly colluding for extra money. Most bug bounty programs have a rule under which a reasonable timeframe is agreed for fixing the bug.