U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, have confirmed that Russia was behind the SolarWinds hack. It is reported that the FBI is investigating whether Russia hacked into project management software JetBrains’ TeamCity DevOps tool to originally
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Show Your IT Professionals Some Love
2020 will go down as one of the most stressful in my career as a cybersecurity professional. I have been working in this area of law full time since 2003. So that says a lot.
On top of the stress of the spread of the coronavirus, this has been a particularly stressful year assisting clients…
Urgent Warning of Imminent Threat to Hospitals Issued by U.S. Government
On October 27, 2020, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned the health care industry about “an imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers.”
According to the warning, which was shared during a conference call, the government has received “credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S.…
Chinese and Russian Hackers Targeting COVID-19 Vaccine Makers in U.S. Crosshairs
Last week, authorities from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada accused a well-known hacker group tied to the Russian government, APT29 a/k/a Cozy Bear of using malware to exploit security vulnerabilities to enable it to steal COVID-19 vaccine research from companies located in these countries working to develop a vaccine. This was after a…
Jackson County, Georgia Pays Hackers $400,000 After Ransomware Attack
Cities and towns continue to be a profitable target for successful ransomware attacks. As we previously reported [view related posts], the list of cities and towns getting hit with ransomware attacks continues to grow.
Last week, Jackson County, Georgia admitted that it paid hackers $400,000 to obtain access to its information that was locked…
Vermont CIO Aggressive Against Russian and Chinese Products
In an effort to phase out what many in the security world believe are threats to the cybersecurity posture of governmental agencies and private entities alike, John Quinn, the Chief Information Officer of the State of Vermont, recently issued a memo to all state offices requesting that they determine whether any hardware or software manufactured…
Vicious Kronos Variant Osiris Malware Recently Released and Proving Dangerous
We all remember Kronos—the malicious malware that was sold by Russian underground forums in 2014 for $7,000. If you bought it, you were promised updates and development of new modules.
The Kronos developers recently released a new update (dubbed Osiris), which is presently attacking individuals in Germany, Japan, and Poland, with the U.S. in the…
Russian Hackers Successfully Phished Hundreds of U.S. Companies Last Year
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has indicated that Russian hackers successfully attacked the energy, nuclear, aviation and critical manufacturing sectors through targeted phishing campaigns throughout 2017.
According to DHS, the coordinated attacks started in 2016 with one compromise that was dormant for a year until other infiltrations occurred. The hackers targeted real people by…
Putin Gives Trump Computer Chipped Soccer Ball
While meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Trump was given a soccer ball, symbolic of the 2018 World Cup played in Russia. Bloomberg has reported that the soccer ball contained a chip, known as near-field communication (NFC) tag, which can transmit information to nearby cellphones, presumably including Trump’s as well.
The chips can send…
Virginia Bank, Hacked Twice with Phishing Schemes, Losing $2.4 Million
In a lawsuit against its insurance company requesting reimbursement for close to $2.4 million from two different hacking incidents, National Bank of Blacksburg detailed the intrusions, which are instructive of a sophisticated scheme against the financial services industry.
According to the lawsuit, the first theft took place on Memorial Day weekend of 2016. In that…