Security News
TikTok has joined Twitter in publishing new US midterm misinformation rules, with considerable crossover in scope and style. Eric Han, TikTok's head of US safety, shared in a blog post that the social video platform is taking a variety of steps to provide access to authoritative information and counter election misinformation.
Conti is the name of a well-known ransomware gang - more precisely, what's known as a ransomware-as-a-service gang, where the ransomware code, and the blackmail demands, and the receipt of extortion payments from desperate victims are handled by a core group. About two years ago, the REvil ransomware gang put up a cool $1,000,000 as front money in an underground hacker-recruiting forum, trying to entice new affiliates to join their cybercriminal capers.
The US government is putting a face on a claimed member of the infamous Conti ransomware group as part of a $10 million reward for information about five of the gang's crew. "The reward notice included the aliases of the alleged attackers -"Tramp," "Dandis," "Professor,"Reshaev," and "Target" - and came with a photo of a man and a message underneath it that said, "Is this the Conti associate known as 'Target'?".
The U.S. State Department announced a $10 million reward today for information on five high-ranking Conti ransomware members, including showing the face of one of the members for the first time. Today, for the first time, the State Department revealed the face of a known Conti ransomware operator known as 'Target,' offering rewards of up to $10 million for information on him and four other members known as 'Tramp,' 'Dandis,' 'Professor,' and 'Reshaev.
Password security is only as strong as the password itself. Let's look at the Zola breach and why it emphasizes the need for organizations to bolster their password security and protect against various types of password attacks.
It's time to reorganize the US government and create a new agency focused solely on on digital risk management services, according to former CISA director Chris Krebs. Or, if that's too ambitious for Uncle Sam, Krebs proposed to at least pull CISA out of the Department of Homeland Security and make it a sub-cabinet agency that's allowed to operate independently.
With the world's largest collection of security folk gathering in Las Vegas for Black hat there are encouraging signs that the US government might actually be getting smarter about hiring. Katie Moussouris, founder of Luta Security, knows a thing or six about recruiting new security talent and was invited to the White House last month to help advise on policy.
Cloudflare says it was subject to a similar attack to one made on comms company Twilio last week, but in this case it was thwarted by hardware security keys that are required to access applications and services. According to Cloudflare, it recorded a very similar incident late last month, which could suggest the two attacks may have originated from the same attacker or group.
The US Treasury Department is levying sanctions against Tornado Cash, a notorious cryptocurrency mixer that it says has been used by threat groups like ransomware gang Lazarus to launder stolen digital assets. According to the government agency, Tornado Cash has been used to launder more than $455 million stolen by the North Korean-supported Lazarus Group, including more than $96 million in Wrapped Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital assets from blockchain startup Harmony's Horizon Bridge service in June.
The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Tornado Cash today, a decentralized cryptocurrency mixer service used to launder more than $7 billion since its creation in 2019. The North Korean-backed APT Lazarus Group also used the crypto mixer to launder approximately $455 million stolen in the largest known cryptocurrency heist ever.