Russia’s FSB Arrests REvil Players at US Request
The morning of January 14, 2022, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) issued a statement that announced the demise of the hacker group REvil. The FSB, in a joint effort with the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) executed a successful takedown of individuals associated with REvil in a series of ... Read More
The Extradition of Vladislav Klyushin
As December 2021 came to a close, indicted and arrested Russian national Vladislav Klyushin was quietly extradited from Switzerland to the United States. A spokesperson for the Russian Embassy in Switzerland, Vladimir Khokhlov, was quoted by TASS and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, saying, “We are forced to state that we ... Read More
APWG’s eCrime 2021 Symposium Shows Cybercrime Evolving
Cybercrime is here, it is dynamic and it is not going anywhere. The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) hosted its 16th annual Electronic Crime Research symposium, APWG eCrime 2021 in early December. The three-day event saw 12 peer-reviewed papers on cybercrime and ecrime presented and discussed from both academia and the ... Read More
US Cyber Command Goes on the Offensive
This past week, General Paul Nakasone, who is both head of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, acknowledged that the United States has gone on offense with respect to targeting cybercriminals who have and who might attempt to attack U.S. businesses with ransomware. Nakasone, in an ... Read More
Apple Warns of Further Compromises by Israel’s NSO Group
The NSO Group, known for their suite of exploitation tools, has once again found itself at the center of unwanted attention when Apple revealed that it had warned a number of individuals, including 11 members of the U.S. Embassy Kampala mission that their iPhones had been compromised. The compromise was ... Read More
Finland Fending Off FluBot Malware, Again
The Finnish National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-FI) has issued a warning to citizens about the current version of the FluBot malware campaign which is affecting “tens of thousands of people in Finland.” The malware campaign leverages SMS by sending out numerous text messages, according to NCSC-FI. The messages, all of ... Read More
Securing Corporate Philanthropy on Giving Tuesday
Tomorrow, November 30, is Giving Tuesday, a day of emphasis on charitable giving both by individuals and organizations and enterprises. The Giving Tuesday movement came into being in 2012 to encourage generosity and charitable giving year-round; the Tuesday after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday is officially designated Giving Tuesday. You’ve no ... Read More
Cybercriminals: Frenemies China, Russia, North Korea
The age-old adage that “Criminals crime” is proving true when it comes to the transnational cybercriminals at play. The cybercriminals associated with the forum RAMP (Russian) have reached out to China’s cybercriminals in a somewhat ham-fisted manner to invite their participation in both the forum and their collaboration in criminal ... Read More
NSO Group Among Those Added to Commerce’s EAR Entity List
This week, the Department of Commerce (DoC) amended its export administrative regulations (EAR) with the addition of four companies onto the entity list, effective November 4, 2021. The four companies—one from Singapore, two from Israel and one from Russia—were all engaged in activities which the U.S. government determined were “contrary ... Read More
AI Driving Foreign Influence, Disinformation and Espionage
In early October 2021, director of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command General Paul Nakasone spoke at the 2021 Mandiant Cyber Defense Summit. In his speech, Nakasone detailed numerous ongoing influence operations and outlined how the entities he commands are tackling nation-state threats. He noted that the main challenge his ... Read More
