Security News
A novel malware named 'Agent Raccoon' is being used in cyberattacks against organizations in the United States, the Middle East, and Africa. Agent Raccoon is a.NET malware disguised as a Google Update or Microsoft OneDrive Updater that leverages the DNS protocol to establish a covert communication channel with the attackers' C2 infrastructure.
Another member of the Trickbot malware crew now faces a lengthy prison sentence amid US law enforcement's ongoing search for its leading members. Russian national Vladimir Dunaev, 40, faces a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison for his involvement in the now-shuttered Trickbot malware, which was often used to deploy ransomware.
The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned the North Korean-backed Kimsuky hacking group for stealing intelligence in support of the country's strategic goals. OFAC has also sanctioned eight North Korean agents for facilitating sanctions evasion and supporting their country's weapons of mass destruction programs.
The Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, spearheaded by US representative and committee chairman Mike Gallagher, penned a letter to secretaries Gina Raimondo, Lloyd Austin, and Janet Yellen requesting an investigation of Chinese LiDAR manufacturers and the appropriateness of sanctions on those entities. "LiDAR is a critical technology used in autonomous systems and robotics but is currently not subject to US export controls or government procurement restrictions, which raises several concerns," reads the letter.
CISA is warning that threat actors breached a U.S. water facility by hacking into Unitronics programmable logic controllers exposed online. PLCs are crucial control and management devices in industrial settings, and hackers compromising them could have severe repercussions, such as water supply contamination through manipulating the device to alter chemical dosing.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury has sanctioned the Sinbad cryptocurrency mixing service for its use as a money-laundering tool by the North Korean Lazarus hacking group. Today, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned Sinbad.io for its alleged use by North Korean hackers who have performed large-scale crypto heists, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
SiegedSec, which also claimed to have breached NATO's IT security on two occasions this year, said it has now hit Idaho National laboratory, which is run by the US Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy. "On Monday, November 20, Idaho National Laboratory determined that it was the target of a cybersecurity data breach in a federally approved vendor system outside the lab that supports INL cloud Human Resources services," spokesperson Lori McNamara told The Register today.
Healthcare SaaS provider Welltok is warning that a data breach exposed the personal data of nearly 8.5 million patients in the U.S. after a file transfer program used by the company was hacked in a data theft attack.Earlier today, the firm reported on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services breach portal that the data breach has been confirmed to impact 8,493,379 people.
The US has seized nearly $9 million in proceeds generated by exploiting more than 70 victims across the nation in so-called "Pig butchering" scams. Authorities tracked payments to cryptocurrency addresses belonging to one organization known for romance scams and fake cryptocurrency investments, known together as "Pig butchering" which means the marks are "Fattened" for slaughter as they load up scammers' accounts before being taken for as much as the crims can extract.
The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange just got a little smaller, with the US Department of Justice announcing Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao have both pleaded guilty to a multitude of financial crimes. According to a criminal case [PDF] unsealed Tuesday, Binance failed to register as a money services business in the United States, broke the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to implement and maintain an anti-money laundering program, and violated the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by allowing US users to transact with individuals in sanctioned countries.