Security News

Aussie police have cuffed a 19-year-old Sydney resident accused of trying to extort money from victims of the recent cyberattack and digital burglary at national telecommunications provider Optus. The Australian Federal Police said today it was alerted to the blackmail attempt when some Optus customers were told to transfer AU$2,000 to a bank account or have their personal data used for financial crimes.

The Australian Federal Police have arrested a 19-year old in Sydney for allegedly using leaked Optus customer data for extortion. More specifically, the suspect used 10,200 records leaked last month by the Optus hackers and contacted victims over SMS to threaten that their data would be sold to other hackers unless they paid AUD 2,000 within two days.

The City of London Police on Friday revealed that it has arrested a 17-year-old teenager from Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking."On the evening of Thursday 22 September 2022, the City of London Police arrested a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking," the agency said, adding "He remains in police custody."

The City of London police announced on Twitter today the arrest of a British 17-year-old teen suspected of being involved in recent cyberattacks. While there are no details about the investigation, the arrest is believed to be tied to the Lapsus$ hacking group, which is suspected to be behind recent cyberattacks on Uber, Rockstar Games, and 2K. During last year's attacks, the Lapsus$ hacking group was said to be led by a threat actor named 'White' or 'BreachBase,' who was doxxed as allegedly a 16-year-old teen from the UK. This hacking group is responsible for numerous high-profile attacks, including Microsoft, Cisco, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Okta.

The Dutch police arrested a 39-year-old man on suspicions of laundering tens of millions of euros worth of cryptocurrency stolen in phishing attacks. The arrest occurred in the early morning of September 6, 2022, with the police seizing devices and "Data carriers" to aid the ongoing investigations.

Amazon has revealed that it gives police videos from its Ring doorbells without a warrant and without user consent. The Amazon company responded to an inquiry from US Senator Ed Markey, confirming that there have been 11 cases in 2022 where Ring complied with police "Emergency" requests.

The report, titled Technology-facilitated abuse: National survey of Australian adults' experiences [PDF], used a sample of 4,562 subjects and found that approximately one in three TFA victimization experiences occurred "In a current or former intimate partner relationship." Australians with a disability, the LGBTQ+ community, and indigenous Australians were more likely to have experienced TFA than other groups. "We have no constraints within the company which precludes anyone from choosing what they want to do and we've had extensive discussions and meetings with the appropriate authorities," said the CEO. Labor rights organization Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate told The Register Parekh's comments were "Misleading."

Spanish law enforcement officials have announced the arrest of two individuals in connection with a cyberattack on the country's radioactivity alert network, which took place between March and June 2021. The act of sabotage is said to have disabled more than one-third of the sensors that are maintained by the Directorate-General for Civil Protection and Emergencies and used to monitor excessive radiation levels across the country.

Senior execs from Alibaba Cloud were summoned to discuss the data leak that saw information pertaining to a billion Chinese citizens sold on the dark web, according to Nikkei and The Wall Street Journal. The Shanghai Police leak is believed to be the biggest data breach ever.

The new proposal-championed by Mayor London Breed after November's wild weekend of orchestrated burglaries and theft in the San Francisco Bay Area-would authorize the police department to use non-city-owned security cameras and camera networks to live monitor "Significant events with public safety concerns" and ongoing felony or misdemeanor violations. Currently, the police can only request historical footage from private cameras related to specific times and locations, rather than blanket monitoring.