Security News
A Russian national working for a cybersecurity company has been extradited to the U.S. where he is being charged for hacking into computer networks of two U.S.-based filing agents used by multiple companies to file quarterly and annual earnings through the Securities and Exchange Commissions system. The defendants used compromised employee credentials to access the networks of the targeted filing agent and view or download data related to earnings of multiple companies, including SEC filings and press releases.
The US Attorney's Office of Massachusetts on Monday announced the extradition of Vladislav Klyushin, a Russian business executive with ties to the Kremlin, on charges of hacking US computer networks and committing securities fraud by trading on undisclosed financial data. M-13, according to the US government's complaint, provided IT and media monitoring services, cyber security consulting, and penetration testing, and claimed prominent Russian government officials and agencies as clients.
Google on Tuesday said it took steps to disrupt the operations of a sophisticated "Multi-component" botnet called Glupteba that approximately infected more than one million Windows computers across the globe and stored its command-and-control server addresses on Bitcoin's blockchain as a resilience mechanism. As part of the efforts, Google's Threat Analysis Group said it partnered with the CyberCrime Investigation Group over the past year to terminate around 63 million Google Docs that were observed to have distributed the malware, alongside 1,183 Google Accounts, 908 Cloud Projects, and 870 Google Ads accounts that were associated with its distribution.
Google announced today that it has taken action to disrupt the Glupteba botnet that now controls more than 1 million Windows PCs around the world, growing by thousands of new infected devices each day. Glupteba is a blockchain-enabled and modular malware that has been targeting Windows devices worldwide since at least 2011, including the US, India, Brazil, and countries from Southeast Asia.
The Nobelium hacking group continues to breach government and enterprise networks worldwide by targeting their cloud and managed service providers and using a new custom "Ceeloader" malware. While Nobelium is an advanced hacking group using custom malware and tools, they still leave traces of activity that researchers can use to analyze their attacks.
Russia's internet watchdog, 'Roskomnadzor', has announced the ban of six more VPN products, bringing the total number to more than a dozen, shows a notification to companies in the country. The latest services added to the list of banned VPN services are Betternet, Lantern, X-VPN, Cloudflare WARP, Tachyon VPN, PrivateTunnel.
A Russian national charged with providing bulletproof hosting services for cybercriminals, who used the platform to spread malware and attack U.S. organizations and financial institutions between 2009 to 2015, has received a 60-month prison sentence. 34-year-old Aleksandr Grichishkin, along with Andrei Skvortsov, founded the bulletproof hosting service and rented its infrastructure to other criminal clientele for distributing a wide range of malware and attempted to cause millions of dollars in losses to U.S. victims.
These attempts to enlist Chinese threat actors are mainly seen on the RAMP hacking forum, which is encouraging Mandarin-speaking actors to participate in conversations, share tips, and collaborate on attacks. The researchers suggest that the most probable cause is that Russian ransomware gangs seek to build alliances with Chinese actors to launch cyber-attacks against U.S. targets, trade vulnerabilities, or even recruit new talent for their Ransomware-as-a-Service operations.
The U.S. Department of Justice sentenced a Russian man for operating a large-scale digital advertising fraud scheme called 'Methbot' that stole at least $7 million from American companies. Aleksandr Zhukov, aka the "King of Fraud," was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment in the U.S. and ordered to forfeit the total sum of his assets, amounting to $3,827,493.
The U.S. Department of Justice sentenced a Russian man for operating a large-scale digital advertising fraud scheme called 'Methbot' that stole at least $7 million from American companies. Aleksandr Zhukov, aka the "King of Fraud," was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment in the U.S. and ordered to forfeit the total sum of his assets, amounting to $3,827,493.