Security News
Positive Technologies has hit back at the US government's "Groundless accusations" that it helped the Russian state carry out cyber attacks against the West - by highlighting how "Government agencies of different countries" use its products. Yesterday the US Treasury declared that Positive was selling weaponised infosec tech to the Russian government and ran recruiting events for state hacking agencies, which some Western news outlets have interpreted as meaning the company's flagship Positive Hack Days events.
"Russia's pattern of malign behaviour around the world - whether in cyberspace, in election interference or in the aggressive operations of their intelligence services - demonstrates that Russia remains the most acute threat to the U.K.'s national and collective security," the U.K. government said in a statement. To that effect, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has imposed sweeping sanctions against Russia for "Undermining the conduct of free and fair elections and democratic institutions" in the U.S. and for its role in facilitating the sprawling SolarWinds hack, while also barring six technology companies in the country that provide support to the cyber program run by Russian Intelligence Services.
Russia's infamous APT 29, aka Cozy Bear, was behind the SolarWinds Orion attack, the US and UK governments said today as America slapped sanctions on Russian infosec companies as well as expelling diplomats from that country's US embassy. "The Russian Intelligence Services' third arm, the SVR, is responsible for the 2020 exploit of the SolarWinds Orion platform and other information technology infrastructures. This intrusion compromised thousands of US government and private sector networks," said the US Treasury.
The United States government is formally accusing the Russian government of the SolarWinds supply-chain attack that gave hackers access to the network of multiple U.S. agencies and private tech sector companies. The press release from the White House confirms past media reports citing unofficial sources that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, was behind the SolarWinds hack.
The Biden administration on Thursday announced the U.S. is expelling 10 Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions against dozens of companies and people, holding the Kremlin accountable for interference in last year's presidential election and the cyber hacking of federal agencies. U.S. intelligence officials alleged in a declassified report last month that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized influence operations to help Donald Trump in his unsuccessful bid for reelection as president, though there's no evidence Russia or anyone else changed votes or manipulated the outcome.
The Biden administration is preparing to announce sanctions in response to a massive Russian hacking campaign that breached vital federal agencies, as well as for election interference, a senior administration official said. U.S. officials last month alleged that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized influence operations to help Donald Trump in his unsuccessful bid for reelection as president, though there's no evidence Russia or anyone else changed votes or manipulated the outcome.
A Nigerian email scammer based in New York was on Tuesday sentenced to 40 months in prison, and ordered to pay back $2.7m in stolen money. As opposed to the infamous Nigerian email scams where people pretended to be heirs to fortunes and devised various ways to get victims to send them money to access their funds, the scam run by Eke and three other Nigerian conspirators was significantly more sophisticated, the indictment states [PDF].
As we explained in a recent Serious Security article on Naked Security, a crook who can upload a file into a Windows server directory where web data is stored doesn't merely get a chance to pollute your web server with fake content, as bad as that would be on its own. Despite several weeks of urgent warnings, not least from Naked Security, there are still plenty of unpatched servers out there just waiting to get pwned.
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said he was more worried about the risk of a large-scale cyberattack than another financial crisis like that of 2008. The risks of a 2008-like crisis with a need for government bailouts of banks were "Very, very low," the head of the US central bank said during an interview aired Sunday on CBS's "60 minutes."
The United States Department of Defense this week announced the launch of a new vulnerability disclosure program on HackerOne to identify vulnerabilities in Defense Industrial Base contractor networks. Running as a pilot, the Defense Industrial Base Vulnerability Disclosure Program covers participating DoD contractor partner's information systems and web properties, as well as other assets within scope, and is separate from the DoD vulnerability disclosure program that already runs on HackerOne.