CyberWire Daily

PureLocker is a new ransomware strain available in the black market. APT33 is showing a surge of activity. Lawfare and information operations in and around Hong Kong. Facebook takes down content for violating its Community Standards. And two alleged cyber criminals are facing charges: one is allegedly the former proprietor of Cardplanet, the other was selling a remote administrative tool the RCMP...

National Association of Manufacturers hacked during Sino-American trade negotiations (and tensions). Ineffectual DDoS attacks hit both of the UK’s largest political parties. Pemex says it’s completed recovery from ransomware. The US Department of Health and Human Services will investigate Google’s Project Nightingale for possible HIPAA issues. And did BlueKeep warnings scare people into patching?...

The UK’s Labour Party says it was hacked, but unsuccessfully. The Lazarus Group seems to be back out and about, and apparently interested in India. The Platinum threat actor continues to prospect Southeast Asian targets with stealthy malware, and a new backdoor. Buran tries to take black market share in the ransomware-as-a-service souk. Paycard standard compliance is down. And is that a spy ship w...

In this CyberWire special edition, a conversation with Andy Greenberg, senior writer at WIRED and author of the new book "Sandworm - A New Era of CyberWar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers." It’s a thrilling investigation of the Olympic Destroyer malware, and an accounting of the new era in which we find ourselves, where nation states can target their adversaries critical infra...

Researchers from Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 have been tracking a Chinese cyber espionage group they've named PKPLUG. The group mainly targets victims in the Southeast Asia region. Ryan Olson is VP of threat intelligence at Palo Alto Networks, and he joins us to share their findings. The original research is here: https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/pkplug_chinese_cyber_espionage_group_attacking_a...

Warnings and advice about Emotet and BlueKeep, both being actively used or exploited in the wild. Two new carding bots are in circulation against e-commerce sites. Expect more of this as criminals test stolen credentials in advance of the holiday shopping season. Amazon fixes a security flaw in its Ring doorbell. A Long Island company is charged with selling bad Chinese security systems as good ma...

The US off-off-year elections seem to have gone off largely free of interference, but officials caution that major foreign influence campaigns can be expected in 2020. Three former Twitter employees are charged with spying for Saudi Arabia. The website defacement campaign in Georgia remains unattributed. Google boots seven adware droppers from the Play Store. Phishers are using web analytics for b...

Facebook closes a hole in Group data access. US authorities seek to reassure Congress and the public concerning the security of election infrastructure. Disinformation remains a challenge, however, as the US prepares for the 2020 elections. Criminals catch Potomac fever as they use politicians’ names and likenesses as an aid to distributing malware. Kaspersky outlines the now-shuttered DarkUnivers...

Ransomware hits Spanish companies. Pegasus continues to excite controversy in India. TikTok applies for Big Tech’s good-citizen club, but has apparently so far been blackballed. Booz Allen offers nine predictions for 2020: balkanization, supply chain threats, automotive data theft, war-droning, satellite hacks, tougher attribution, election interference, missiles against malware, and Olympic inter...

BlueKeep is being exploited in the wild, not too seriously, yet, but you should still patch. Nunavut’s government is recovering from a ransomware attack is sustained Saturday morning. The NSO Group controversy spreads into an Indian politcal dust-up. Different Magecart groups are found to be be independently hitting the same victims. GandCrab provided a new template for the cyber underworld. And U...

What’s an insider threat? Loosely, it’s a threat that operates from within your organization. In this CyberWire special edition, our UK correspondent Carole Theriault speaks with experts who’ll talk us through the different ways insider threats manifest themselves.  A quick note - when Carole interviewed Dr. Richard Ford he was with Forcepoint. He’s since moved on to Cyren. Learn more about your a...

Until recently, usability was often an afterthought when developing security tools. These days there's growing realization that usability is a fundamental part of security. Lorrie Cranor is director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security lab (CUPS) at Carnegie Mellon University. She shares the work she's been doing with her colleagues and students to improve security through usability. The resea...

FireEye warns of Messagetap malware and its spying on SMS. NSO Group’s Pegasus troubles seem to be expanding. Russia prepares to disconnect its Internet. The US opens a national security investigation into TikTok. An Android keyboard app is making bogus purchases and doing other adware stuff. E-sports draw criminal attention. And happy birthday, GCHQ. Robert M. Lee from Dragos on why it’s importan...

The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant confirms it had malware in a business system, but that control systems were unaffected. Franchising coordinated inauthenticity. Facebook deletes NSO Group employees. Twitter says it will no longer accept political ads. NIST wants your comments. And Moody’s appears ready to consider cyber risk in its credit ratings. Ben Yelin from UMD CHHS on Europeans' right to r...

WhatsApp sues NSO Group for spreading Pegasus intercept software through WhatsApp’s service. Georgia continues its recovery from the large website defacement campaign it suffered at the beginning of the week. Facebook ejects more inauthenticity. Johannesburg hangs tough on cyber extortion. Money laundering finds its way into online games. Norsk Hydro’s insurance claim. An update on pentesting in I...

Fancy Bear is pawing at anti-doping agencies, again, suggesting more to come for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Johannesburg has declined to pay the Shadow Kill Hackers the money they demanded. Adwind jRAT has gotten a bit harder to detect. The US FCC is considering a measure that would prevent certain funds from being used to purchase Huawei or ZTE gear. Pwn2Own goes ICS. Georgia is hit by unknown hack...

Actionable intelligence, culling signal from noise, and the online resilience of threat groups. Ransomware hits a legal case management system. The city of Johannesburg continues its recovery from an online extortion attempt. The Raccoon information stealer looks like a disruptive product in the criminal-to-criminal market: not the best, but good enough, and cheaper than the high-end alternatives....

Researchers at Juniper Networks have been tracking a trojan they call Masad Stealer, which uses the Telegram instant messaging platform for part it its command and control infrastructure. (Telegram wasn't hacked; it's the innocent conduit.) Mounir Hahad is head of Juniper Threat Labs at Juniper Networks and he joins us to share their findings The original research is here: https://forums.juniper.n...

A spearphishing campaign is found targeting humanitarian, aid, and policy organizaitons. Google and Apple remove clickfraud-infested apps from their stores. A last look back at SecurityWeek’s 2019 ICS Cyber Security Conference, which wrapped up in Atlanta yesterday afternoon. Close- reading GCHQ and NSA advisories. The BBC takes to the dark web, in a good way. And Senators call for investigations...

AWS and Google Cloud are back up after early week unrelated outages. A German automation tool manufacturer discloses a ransomware infestation. Mobile malware in the spies’ toolkit. The FBI’s Protected Voices share election secuirty informaiton. Notes from SecurityWeek’s 2019 ICS Cyber Security Conference. NCSC’s annual report. And people have things to say about backdoors, bribes, and those aliens...

Magecart Group 5 is linked to the Carbanak gang. Another recently acquired reservation systems brings a headache to hospitality. Another app is found to carry the Joker malware. Some more notes from SecurityWeek’s ICS Cyber Security Conference in Atlanta, where the emphasis remains on attention to detail and taking care of first things first. And a list of the most dangerous celebrities offers a p...

Facebook takes down more coordinated inauthenticity from Iran and Russia, and announces a new transparency policy about news sources. The former NSA Director schools an ICS security audience on the Westphalian system. Three VPNs and one antivirus provider sustain breaches that may be contained, but that may also derive from exploitation of phantom accounts. Microsoft gets more EU scrutiny. And Mr....

Some notes on not jumping to conclusions that incidents are cyber attacks. A false flag operation shows the difficulty of attribution: not everything that purrs is a kitten, because sometimes it’s a bear. Notes from the ISC Security Conference in Atlanta, including some reflections on the criminal market’s business cycle, the dangers of social engineering, and the importance of attending to the fu...

Researchers at Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) recently published a report titled SOHOpelessly Broken 2.0, Security Vulnerabilities in Network Accessible Services. This publication continues and expands previous work they did examining small office/home office (SOHO) routers, network-attached storage devices (NAS), and IP cameras.  Shaun Mirani is a security analyst at ISE, and he joins us t...

Clickfraud arrives via a third-party SDK, and the app developers who used it say they didn’t know nuthin’. Maybe they didn’t. A Trojanized TOR browser warns its bro’s that, whoa, you’re out of date and the police might see you, but it’s really just stealing the bros’ alt-coin. WiFi bugs are fixed in Kindle and Alexa. Don’t try to jailbreak your iPhone from a sketchy Checkrain site. Two Big Tech co...