Security News
US President Joe Biden has urged companies in critical infrastructure sectors to shore up their defenses against potential cyberattacks. "Most of America's critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector and critical infrastructure owners and operators must accelerate efforts to lock their digital doors," he noted, and advised those that have not yet done it to harden their cyber defenses by implementing security best practices delineated earlier this year.
The AvosLocker ransomware has targeted multiple victims across the country, according to the joint advisory [PDF] issued late last week by the FBI, Treasury Department and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 researchers in July 2021 wrote about an advertisement they saw on Dread, which they described as a "Reddit-like dark web discussion forum," for a new RaaS called AvosLocker, outlining features of the ransomware and letting affiliates who leverage the malware know that AvosLocker operators would handle the negotiation and extortion practices.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation warns of AvosLocker ransomware being used in attacks targeting multiple US critical infrastructure sectors. "AvosLocker is a Ransomware as a Service affiliate-based group that has targeted victims across multiple critical infrastructure sectors in the United States including, but not limited to, the Financial Services, Critical Manufacturing, and Government Facilities sectors," the FBI said [PDF].
In a warning to aviation authorities and air operators on Thursday, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency warned of satellite jamming and spoofing attacks across a broad swath of Eastern Europe that could affect air navigation systems. The warning came in tandem with a separate alert from the FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency that hackers could be targeting satellite communications networks in general.
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.
In this interview with Help Net Security, Michael Johnson, Board of Directors at Safe Security, talks about the importance of critical infrastructure security, why attacks on critical infrastructure are particularly worrying, and what can be done to thwart these threats. Our way of life could be impacted by a capable attack on critical infrastructure.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation says the Ragnar Locker ransomware gang has breached the networks of at least 52 organizations from multiple US critical infrastructure sectors. "As of January 2022, the FBI has identified at least 52 entities across 10 critical infrastructure sectors affected by RagnarLocker ransomware, including entities in the critical manufacturing, energy, financial services, government, and information technology sectors," the federal law enforcement agency said [PDF].
As the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict continues to escalate, the Russian government on Thursday released a massive list containing 17,576 IP addresses and 166 domains that it said are behind a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks aimed at its domestic infrastructure. As part of its recommendations to counter the DDoS attacks, the agency is urging organizations to ringfence network devices, enable logging, change passwords associated with key infrastructure elements, turn off automatic software updates, disable third-party plugins on websites, enforce data backups, and watch out phishing attacks.
The U.S. Senate unanimously passed the "Strengthening American Cybersecurity Act" on Tuesday in an attempt to bolster the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure owners in the country. The new bipartisan legislation, among other things, stipulates entities that experience a cyber incident to report the attacks within 72 hours to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in addition to alerting the agency about ransomware payments within 24 hours.
The modular Windows crimeware platform known as TrickBot formally shuttered its infrastructure on Thursday after reports emerged of its imminent retirement amid a lull in its activity for almost two months, marking an end to one of the most persistent malware campaigns in recent years. Attributed to a Russia-based criminal enterprise called Wizard Spider, TrickBot started out as a financial trojan in late 2016 and is a derivative of another banking malware called Dyre that was dismantled in November 2015.