CyberWire Daily

Cozy Bear isn’t back--Cozy Bear never really left at all. Iran says the Americans are dreaming: there was no cyberattack in retaliation for Iran’s implausibly deniable missile strikes on Saudi oil fields last month. Malicious audio files are dropping cryptominers and reverse shells into victim systems. An international dragnet collars hundreds in a darknet child exploitation sweep. And Graboid is...

The US may have retaliated in cyberspace for Iran’s strikes against Saudi oil fields. China’s new C919 airliner seems to have benefited greatly from industrial espionage. An old botnet learns new tricks. Typosquatting as an election influence trick. A look at price lists in the Criminal-to-Criminal marketplace. Recovering from ransomware. And when it comes to reputation management, there’s not so...

Ransomware hits companies in France and the US. A Finnish energy company sustains a suspicious IT incident. Turkey jams social media as it rolls tanks against the Kurds. Pegasus spyware said to be in use against Moroccan activists. Silent Librarian is still making noise. The Lazarus Group is back with a malign crypto-trading app. China tightens its cyber laws, and the EU privately warns itself tha...

Michael Gillespie is a programmer at Emsisoft, as well as a host of the popular ID Ransomware web site that helps victims identify what strain of ransomware they may have been infected with, and what decryptors may be available. He's written many decryptors himself, most recently for the Syrk strain of ransomware.  Links to the research and Michael's work: https://blog.emsisoft.com/en/33885/emsiso...

BitPaymer ransomware is exploiting an Apple zero-day. “Attor” isn’t your ordinary malign faerie: it’s also an espionage platform that’s been carefully deployed against Russian and Eastern European targets. FIN7 upgrades its toolkit. Apple does what the Chinese government asks it to do, blocking a mapping and a news app from users in China. And a look inside the black box, as we visit NSA’s Cyberse...

A US Defense Intelligence Agency analyst has been charged with leaking national defense information. Europol releases its 2019 Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment. NSA Director Nakasone says the Agency’s Cybersecurity Directorate will first focus on protecting the Defense Industrial Base from intellectual property theft. CISA wants subpoena power over ISPs. And US companies are criticised f...

Twitter says it’s sorry is anything might have inadvertently happened with users’ email addresses and phone numbers, and that it’s taking steps to stop whatever might have happened from happening again. If anything actually happened. Other concerns about privacy surface elsewhere. The US  Senate Intelligence Committee issues its report on influence operations in the 2016 elections. Kaspersky ties...

An update on Mustang Panda, and its pursuit of the goals outlined in the Thirteenth Five Year Plan. Unpatched Drupal instances are being hit as targets of opportunity. NSA adds its warnings to those of CISA and NCSC concering widely used VPNs: if you use them, patch them. (And change your credentials). Five Senators tell Microsoft, nicely, that Redmond is naive about Huawei. Patch Tuesday is here....

Iranian threat group Phosphorus (or Charming Kitten) has been found active against US elections and other targets. A big database of PII on Brazilians is up for auction in the dark web souks. Prince Harry takes a legal whack at Fleet Street. An Atlantic Council session takes a look at electrical infrastructure cyber risk. An Alabama medical system pays the ransom to get its files back. And HildaCr...

Researchers at FireEye recently released a report detailing the activities of APT41, a Chinese cyber threat group notable for the range of tools they use, their origins in the world of video gaming, and their willingness to shift from seemingly state-sponsored activity to hacking for personal gain.  Nalani Fraser and Fred Plan contributed to the report, and they join us to share their findings. Th...

Project Zero warns that a use-after-free vulnerability in widely used Android devices is being exploited in the wild. Uzbekistan’s National Security Service continues to get stick in the court of public opinion for sloppy opsec. Check Point reports on what appears to be an Egyptian domestic surveillance operation. Palo Alto reports on a newly discovered Chinese state threat actor. A new volley in...

Who’s been hacking aerospace firms? Context Security suggests it’s a new Chinese threat actor, “Avivore.” The FBI issues a ransomware alert. The NCSC warns of active exploitation of vulnerable VPNs. The EU issues a sweeping takedown order to Facebook. US Senators ask Facebook about deep fakes. Spearphishing at the Australian National University. FireEye may be for sale. And the SandCat threat grou...

Sobinokibi ransomware looks more like the child of GandCrab, and McAfee has some thoughts on how ransomware-as-a-service operates. FakeUpdates are back, and they’re installing ransomware, too. The Adwind RAT is back and infesting a new set of targets: it’s moved on from hospitality and retail and into the oil industry. Maliciously crafted ODT files are appearing in the wild. And a big database abo...

The oligarch behind the St. Petersburg troll farm is sanctioned, again. Recorded Future looks at disinformation and finds there’s a functioning private sector market for it. The European Union seems likely to pursue technological sovereignty, at least to the tune of some R&D investment. Ransomware attacks against US state and local governments have been trending up, and that trend is likely to con...

Rheinmetall and DCC have disclosed sustaining cyber attacks. The US Government is looking at airliner cyber vulnerabilities. SimJacker is real, but recent phones seem unaffected. RCMP data misappropriation case update. German police raid a bulletproof host. Gnosticplayers may be back. And someone is sending phishing snail mail that claims the British Crown needs your help to ease the economic fall...

Researchers at Prevalion have been tracking a malware campaign making use of antiquated file formats and social engineering to target specific groups.  Danny Adamitis and Elizabeth Wharton are coauthors of the report, and they join us to share their findings. The research can be found here: https://blog.prevailion.com/2019/09/autumn-aperture-report.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit mega...

The Airbus supply chain is reported to be under attack, possibly by Chinese industrial espionage operators. Phishing campaigns impersonate Google Cloud services. A new commodity information stealer is on offer in the black market. The vBulletin zero-day was weaponized surprisingly quickly. DoorDash discloses a hack that exposed almost five million persons’ data. And a look at JTF Ares operations a...

North Korea’s Lazarus Group is active against targets in India. A “suspected Chinese advanced persistent threat group” is exploiting a Windows accessibility feature. Sophos warns of “fleeceware.” US DNI testifies efore the House Intelligence Committee. The TalkTalk hacker and an alleged accomplice are indicted on US charges. What’s involved in receiving compensation in the Yahoo breach settlement....

Tortoiseshell is trolling for military veterans. There’s been a fresh Fancy Bear sighting. The transcript of a conversation between the US and Ukrainian presidents has been released. Citizen Lab warns that Poison Carp is actively working against Tibetan groups. A zero-day afflicting vBulletin forum software is out. GandCrab comes out of retirement. And there’s an odd spam campaign in circulation t...

APT10 has been phishing in US utilities. Google wins a big round over the EU’s right to be forgotten. European courts are also considering binding contractual clauses and Privacy Shield, which together have facilitated transatlantic data transfer. Twenty-seven nations agree on “responsible state behavior in cyberspace.” A hawkish take on Huawei’s 5G ambitions. And Edward Snowden’s book is being us...

YouTube creators in the “car community” get their accounts hijacked over the weekend. Facebook finds tens of thousands of apps behaving badly with respect to priority--the social network’s announcement has been cooly received in the US Senate. The Gulf region continues to be a field of cyber as well as kinetic competition. Huawei’s CFO is back in court today. And Iowa tries to sort out what it act...

Many users of inexpensive internet routers use guest network functionality to help secure their home networks. Researchers at Ben Gurion University have discovered methods for defeating these security measures. Dr. Yossi Oren joins us to share their findings. The original research is here: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/woot19-paper_ovadia.pdf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone...

Twitter details actions against coordinated inauthenticity in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ecuador, Spain, and China. Tension with Iran remain high, but cyber action hasn’t sharply spiked. The Smominru botnet installs malware, including miners, and kicks other malicious code out of infected machines. Panda cryptojackers are careless but effective. Huawei says it’s the victim of a bill of attai...

A quick look at CISA’s National Cybersecurity Summit. A big new distributed denial-of-service vector is reported. Medical servers leave patient information exposed to the public Internet. Huawei is suspended from the FIRST group as it argues its case in a US Federal court. And one of the challenges of engaging ISIS online is that it relies so heavily on commercial infrastructure--it’s got to be ta...

A newly discovered threat actor, “Tortoiseshell,” has been active against targets in the Middle East. The Simjacker vulnerability may not be as widely exploitable as early reports led many to believe. The US Army seems committed to decentralizing cyber operations along long-familiar artillery lines. Joint Task Force Ares continues to keep an eye on ISIS. Canada seeks to reassure allies over the Or...