Matt Burgess reports: For more than a decade, Vyacheslav Igorevich Penchukov—a Ukrainian who used the online hacker name “Tank”—managed to evade cops. When FBI and Ukrainian officials raided his Donetsk apartment in 2010, the place was deserted and Penchukov had vanished. But the criminal spree came to a juddering halt at the end of 2022,…
Category: Malware
CloudSorcerer hackers abuse cloud services to steal Russian govt data
Bill Toulas reports: A new advanced persistent threat (APT) group named CloudSorcerer abuses public cloud services to steal data from Russian government organizations in cyberespionage attacks. Kaspersky security researchers discovered the cyberespionage group in May 2024. They report that CloudSorcerer uses custom malware that uses legitimate cloud services for command and control (C2) operations and data storage….
Cyber Attack May Have Exposed Alabama Student, Teacher Data
Rebecca Griesbach reports: The Alabama State Department of Education experienced a data breach in June that may have compromised some student and employee data, officials announced Wednesday. On June 17, information system staff interrupted and stopped an attack on the department’s computer system before hackers could fully access the system or lock it, according to…
Florida health department data captured in cyberattack, hackers claim
Lawrence Mower, Romy Ellenbogen, and Christopher O’Donnell report: A hacker group claims it has breached the Florida Department of Health and gained access to a large amount of potentially sensitive data on Floridians. The RansomHub ransomware group said in a post on the dark web that it will release 100 gigabytes of department data unless the…
Assessing the Disruptions of Ransomware Gangs
Intel 471 took a look back at law enforcement attempts to disrupt ransomware groups and at the recent Operation Cronos. Their timeline begins in 2021. The report looks at the immediate impact of disruptions and then the long-term impact. Do disruptions really make a significant — and lasting — dent in the problem, or are…
Ransomware group who hit Indonesian government apologizes, hands over encryption key
Laura Dobberstein reports: Brain Cipher, the group responsible for hacking into Indonesia’s Temporary National Data Center (PDNS) and disrupting the country’s services, has seemingly apologized for its actions and released an encryption key to the government. That key was in the form of an 54 kb ESXi file. Its efficacy has not yet been confirmed….