Security News

Russia faces a critical IT storage crisis after Western cloud providers pulled out of the country, leaving Russia with only two more months before they run out of data storage. The Russian government is exploring various solutions to resolve this IT storage problem, ranging from leasing all available domestic data storage to seizing IT resources left behind by businesses that pulled out of the country.

Cybercriminals are taking sides over Russia's deadly invasion of Ukraine, putting either the West or Moscow in their sights, according to Accenture. "Pro-Ukrainian actors are refusing to sell, buy, or collaborate with Russian-aligned actors and are increasingly attempting to target Russian entities in support of Ukraine," Accenture claimed.

China's Cyberspace Administration has claimed that "Since late February" it has observed continuous attacks on the Chinese internet and local computers by actors who used the resources they co-opted to target Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. The allegation, the title of which translates as "My country's internet suffers from overseas cyber attacks," was posted last Friday and include a list of IP addresses that the Administration claims as the source or target of the attacks.

Russia's Investigative Committee, the nation's peak criminal and anti-corruption investigation body, has opened a probe into whether Meta is an extremist organization. Responding to reports that the Russian government is considering designating Meta as an extremist organization for its policies in support of speech: pic.

Russian Internet watchdog Roskomnadzor announced that Instagram will also be banned in Russia one week after blocking the Facebook and Twitter social networks. This time around, Instagram's ban comes after reports that Instagram's parent company, Meta, decided to allow calls for violence in some countries on Facebook and Instagram against Russian invaders and the Russian and Belarusian presidents.

Russia is offering its own trusted Transport Layer Security certificate authority to replace certificates that need to be renewed by foreign countries. According to a notice on Russia's public service portal, Gosuslugi, as shown in a translated version in this article's featured art, the certificates will replace foreign security certs if they expire or get yanked by foreign CAs.

Russia may try to dodge sanctions using ransomware payments, warns US Treasury. As the United States and its companies distance themselves from Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, the Treasury says Russia may be attempting to avoid the sanctions by utilizing ransomware payments to do so.

In a Wednesday threat advisory, Cisco Talos described a campaign it's observed in which a threat actor was offering a supposed distributed denial-of-service tool on Telegram that's purportedly meant to pummel Russian websites. The crisis has brought both new threats and an influx of actors "Of varying skill," Cisco said.

Russia has created its own trusted TLS certificate authority to solve website access problems that have been piling up after sanctions prevent certificate renewals. The sanctions imposed by western companies and governments are preventing Russian sites from renewing existing TLS certificates, causing browsers to block access to sites with expired certificates.

Russia may ramp up ransomware attacks against the United States as a way to avoid sanctions levied against the nation and Vladimir Putin's government for its invasion of Ukraine, U.S. federal authorities are warning. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a FinCEN Alert on Wednesday advising all financial institutions to remain vigilant against potential efforts to evade the expansive sanctions and other U.S.-imposed restrictions related to the current conflict.