Security News

China's government on Thursday called on Washington to drop efforts to expel three state-owned Chinese phone companies from the United States in a new clash over technology and security. The United States should "Stop the wrong practice of generalizing the concept of national security and politicizing economic issues" and "Stop abusing state power to unreasonably suppress Chinese enterprises," said a ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning US private sector companies about an increase in business email compromise attacks targeting state, local, tribal, and territorial government entities. "From 2018 through 2020, the FBI observed increases in business email compromise actors targeting state, local, tribal, and territorial government entities for financial gain due to vulnerability exploitation and transparency requirements," the FBI said.

Readers may remember Kottman pointed out holes in a security skills assessment website run by Deloitte, dropped 20GB of Intel secrets onto the web and shamed the security of DevOps tool SonarQube by releasing third-party code created with the project. Illegally accessing computers belonging to a security device manufacturer located in the Western District of Washington and stealing proprietary data.

The Justice Department has charged a Swiss hacker with computer intrusion and identity theft, just over a week after the hacker took credit for helping to break into the online systems of a U.S. security-camera startup. Swiss authorities said they had raided Kottmann's home in Lucerne late last week at the request of U.S. authorities.

Entrust announced a master distributor agreement with SYNNEX to offer its comprehensive range of Entrust nShield hardware security modules and cybersecurity solutions to customers across the United States and Canada. This North America distribution agreement with SYNNEX provides its resellers with Entrust nShield HSMs to protect customer data and secure emerging technologies such as cloud, IoT, blockchain, and digital payments.

The latest scams use phishing emails to deliver remote access trojans to control a victim's computer and steal sensitive data, says Cybereason. With the usual April 15 deadline approaching, a report released Thursday by security provider Cybereason reveals the latest scams against taxpayers and offers advice on how to avoid them.

US taxpayers are being targeted by phishing attacks attempting to take over their computers using malware and steal sensitive personal and financial information. "The potential for damage is serious and the malware allows threat actors to gain full control over a victim's machine and steal sensitive information from users or their employers."

Security vendor McAfee has detected an attack it believes was likely aimed at telecoms companies in the hope of stealing information related to 5G networks. McAfee has named the attack "Operation Diànxùn" and says it resembles past attacks perpetrated by groups named RedDelta and Mustang Panda.

A Florida teenager accused of masterminding a Twitter hack of celebrity accounts in a crypto currency scheme has been sentenced to three years in juvenile prison in a plea agreement, officials said. State prosecutors announced the deal Tuesday in the case of Graham Ivan Clark, 18, described as the mastermind of the July 2020 "Bit-Con" worldwide hack of Twitter accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and others.

An alert issued on Tuesday by the FBI warns about an increase in PYSA ransomware attacks on education institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom. According to the FBI, PYSA attacks have been launched by "Unidentified cyber actors" against higher education, K-12 schools and seminaries in a dozen U.S. states, as well as the U.K. The threat actors behind PYSA attacks are known to encrypt data on compromised systems, but they also steal information from victims and threaten to leak it in an effort to increase their chances of getting paid.