Security News
A British man has been charged in the United States in connection with a Twitter hack last summer that compromised the accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls, the Justice Department said Wednesday. Joseph O'Connor, 22, was arrested in the coastal resort town of Estepona, Spain, on an arrest warrant accusing him of involvement in a July 2020 hack of more than 130 accounts, and of hacks that prosecutors said took over TikTok and Snapchat accounts, including "One of the most viewed and followed" TikTok stars.
Three US senators have written to their nation's Olympic Committee with a request that it "Forbid American athletes from receiving or using Digital Yuan during the Beijing Olympics" - a reference to the Winter Games scheduled to commence on February 4th, 2022. "While the Chinese Communist Party insists their efforts are aimed at digitizing bank notes and coins, Olympic athletes should be aware that the Digital Yuan may be used to surveil Chinese citizens and those visiting China on an unprecedented scale," wrote [PDF] Senators Marsha Blackburn, Roger Wicker and Cynthia Lummis.
The U.S. government and its key allies, including the European Union, the U.K., and NATO, formally attributed the massive cyberattack against Microsoft Exchange email servers to state-sponsored hacking crews working affiliated with the People's Republic of China's Ministry of State Security. "In a statement issued by the White House on Monday, the administration said,"with a high degree of confidence that malicious cyber actors affiliated with PRC's MSS conducted cyber-espionage operations utilizing the zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server disclosed in early March 2021.
Chinese state-sponsored attackers have breached 13 US oil and natural gas pipeline companies between December 2011 to 2013 following a spear-phishing campaign targeting their employees. The end goal of the attacks was to help China develop cyberattack capabilities that would allow future intrusions to physically damage targeted pipelines or disrupt US pipeline operations.
Former journalist Matthew Keys, who served two years in prison for posting his Tribune Company content management system credentials online a decade ago in violation of America's Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, has been ordered back to prison for violating the terms of his supervised release. On Monday, Keys, 34, a resident of Vacaville, California, received an additional six-month sentence and 18 months of supervision with computer monitoring requirements, according to the US Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of California.
The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday announced new requirements for U.S. pipeline operators to bolster cybersecurity following a May ransomware attack that disrupted gas delivery across the East Coast. In a statement, DHS said it would require operators of federally designated critical pipelines to implement "Specific mitigation measures" to prevent ransomware attacks and other cyber intrusions.
China on Tuesday said the US had "Fabricated" allegations it carried out a massive Microsoft hack, countering that Washington was the "World champion" of cyber attacks while raging at American allies for signing up to a rare joint statement of condemnation. The United States on Monday accused Beijing of carrying out the March cyber attack on Microsoft Exchange, a top email server for corporations around the world, and charged four Chinese nationals over the "Malicious" hack.
Law firm Campbell Conroy & O'Neil has warned of a breach from late February which may have exposed data from the company's lengthy client list of big-name corporations including Apple and IBM. The breach, which was discovered on 27 February 2021 when a ransomware infection blocked access to selected files on the company's internal systems, has been blamed on an unnamed "Unauthorised actor." While it's not yet known precisely what data was accessed during the breach, the system affected held a treasure trove including "Certain individuals' names, dates of birth, driver's license numbers/state identification numbers, financial account information, Social Security numbers, passport numbers, payment card information, medical information, health insurance information, biometric data, and/or online account credentials," the company confirmed in a statement regarding the attack.
The US has also blamed hackers working with China for ransomware attacks, extortion, crypto-jacking and other cybercrimes. The United States and several allies have officially pointed the finger at China for the recent hack of Microsoft Exchange server as well as an ongoing series of cyberattacks carried out by contract hackers for personal profit.
Today, the US Department of Justice indicted four members of the Chinese state-sponsored hacking group known as APT40 for hacking various companies, universities, and government entities in the US and worldwide between 2011 and 2018. Wu Shurong, the fourth Chinese national indicted today by the DOJ, was hired through Hainan Xiandun to create malware, hack into foreign governments' computer systems, companies, and universities to steal trade secrets, intellectual property, and other high-value information, as well as to supervise other Hainan Xiandun hackers.