Security News
Considering the phenomenal increase in mobile and IoT devices, data traffic subscribers, and SIM connections, how have the security challenges evolved for telecom providers? Regardless of the security of the network connection, the consumer should be provided with the protection they need to keep them and their data safe.
The US Attorney's Office for the district alleged Sagar Steven Singh and Nicholas Ceraolo had not only blackmailed victims using their personal info by threatening to post it on a public-facing website, but they also made "Emergency requests" to social media companies asking for information about users. It might interest readers to know that Twitter, for example, had 11,500 requests for information on 28,000 accounts worldwide from government and law enforcement officials from July to December 2021.
A coordinated international law enforcement exercise has taken down the online infrastructure associated with a cross-platform remote access trojan known as NetWire. "NetWire is a licensed commodity RAT offered in underground forums to non-technical users to carry out their own criminal activities," Europol's European Cybercrime Center said in a tweet.
In a joint effort, the German Regional Police, Ukrainian National Police, Europol, Dutch Police, and FBI joined forces on February 28, 2023, to take down the masterminds behind a notorious criminal organization responsible for unleashing devastating cyberattacks using the DoppelPaymer ransomware. This ransomware appeared in 2019, when cybercriminals started using it to launch attacks against organizations, critical infrastructure, and industries.
The US Marshals Service, the enforcement branch of the nation's federal courts, has admitted to a "Major" breach of its information security defenses allowed a ransomware infection and exfiltration of "Law-enforcement sensitive information". NBC broke news of the incident, which Marshals Service spokesperson Drew Wade described as having impacted a system that "Contains law enforcement sensitive information, including returns from legal process, administrative information, and personally identifiable information pertaining to subjects of USMS investigations, third parties, and certain USMS employees."
A joint law enforcement operation conducted by Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland has cracked yet another encrypted messaging application named Exclu used by organized crime groups. "Exclu makes it possible to exchange messages, photos, notes, voice memos, chat conversations, and videos with other users," the Politie said.
The infrastructure associated with the Hive ransomware-as-a-service operation has been seized as part of a coordinated law enforcement effort involving 13 countries. "Law enforcement identified the decryption keys and shared them with many of the victims, helping them regain access to their data without paying the cybercriminals," Europol said in a statement.
Today, the Hive ransomware Tor payment and data leak sites were seized as part of an international law enforcement operation involving the US Department of Justice, FBI, Secret Service, Europol, and Germany's BKA and Polizei. The seizure notice on the Tor sites also lists a wide range of other countries involved in the law enforcement operation, including Canda, France, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Cybercriminals are scamming each other out of millions of dollars and use arbitration to settle disputes about the scams, according to Sophos. Despite this resolution process provoking occasional mayhem among the "Plaintiffs and defendants," with some accused criminals either going dark and not showing up, or calling the complainants themselves "Rippers," the practice of scammers scamming scammers is lucrative.
One answer for law enforcement agencies is to switch from on-premises systems to those that are cloud-native. The team overseeing an on-prem server at a local law enforcement agency must be concerned about a seemingly endless list of threats, weaknesses and vulnerabilities, ranging from floods to temperature variations and malware to denial of service attacks.