Andy Greenberg reports: In the notorious 2016 breach of the Democratic National Committee, the group of Russian hackers known as Fancy Bear stole the show, leaking the emails and documents they had obtained in a brazen campaign to sway the results of the US presidential election. But another, far quieter band of Kremlin hackers was inside…
Category: Of Note
No Kremlin Link Found to Russian Hacker Awaiting Extradition in Israel; One of Top 100 Hackers in the World?
Josh Breiner, Bar Peleg and Liza Rozovsky report: The U.S. Secret Service did not find any links between Russian hacker Aleksey Burkov and Russian intelligence, or any other government officials, the special agent who led the investigation, Erik Rasmussen, told Haaretz. Burkov’s name never came up in security contexts, or in Russian involvement in the…
South Korean National and Hundreds of Others Charged Worldwide in the Takedown of the Largest Darknet Child Pornography Website, Which was Funded by Bitcoin
From the Department of Justice: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, October 16, 2019 South Korean National and Hundreds of Others Charged Worldwide in the Takedown of the Largest Darknet Child Pornography Website, Which was Funded by Bitcoin Dozens of Minor Victims Who Were Being Actively Abused by the Users of the Site Rescued Jong Woo Son,…
Phorpiex botnet made $115,000 in five months just from mass-spamming sextortion emails
Catalin Cimpanu reports: Researchers at cyber-security firm Check Point say they’ve tracked one of the sources of the recent rise in sextortion emails to a good ol’ friend — the Phorpiex spam botnet, also known as Trik. Check Point says that since April, they’ve seen the botnet send out multiple spam campaigns with a “sextortion” lure —…
Equifax data breach FAQ: What happened, who was affected, what was the impact?
We spent a good amount of time in the cybersecurity forum today talking about the Equifax breach. Here’s a summary of some of their key failures, reported by Josh Fruhlinger and based on A U.S. General Accounting Office’s report, and an in-depth analysis from Bloomberg Businessweek. Here are just two of the findings, as reported by Fruhlinger:…
ANNOUNCE: Trying to build your resume as an ethical researcher and whitehat? Now there’s some help for you.
I won’t have much time to update news over the next few days while I am in Washington DC for the Privacy and Security Forum, but I just couldn’t wait until I got back to share what I hope is encouraging news for some of you. I know that there are a number of young…