CyberWire Daily

More advice to patch BlueKeep, already. Facebook announces its planned launch of a cryptocurrency, Libra, to the accompaniment of considerable acclaim and at least as much skepticism. Updates on alleged power grid cyber operations. Catphishing and the adaptation of traditional espionage craft in the digital age. And cheap sunglasses turn up as phishbait in compromised social media accounts. Justin...

Investigation into Argentina’s power failure continues, with preliminary indications suggesting “operational and design errors were responsible for the outage. Russia reacts to reports that the US staged malware in its power grid. Iran says it stopped US cyberespionage. ISIS worries about its vulnerability to BlueKeep. A breach at EatStreet illustrates some of the features of third-party risk. Ben...

The New York Times reports that the US has staged malware in Russia’s power grid, presumably as deterrence against Russian cyberattacks against the US. South America has largely recovered from a large-scale power outage that seems, so far, to have been accidental. An EU report claims that Russian information operations against the EU are increasing. Twitter takes down more inauthentic sites. The T...

Researchers at Zscaler have been tracking look-alike apps in third-party Android app stores that carry malicious code. Deepen Desai is VP of security research and operations and Zscaler, and he joins us to share their findings.  The original research can be found here: https://www.zscaler.com/blogs/research/third-party-android-store-sms-trojan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/a...

Xenotime is detected snooping around the North American power grid. Hacking groups exploit the Return of the Wizard vulnerability in Exim servers. Hearings on the extradition of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange have begun. Online gamers are being chased with credential stuffing attacks: they’re after your skins, your accounts, your credit cards. And some LinkedIn catphish seem to be going to AI charm sch...

Telegram recovers from a distributed denial-of-service attack. No attribution yet, but all the circumstantial evidence points to the Chinese security services. Operation Fishwrap, conducted by parties unknown, is an influence campaign that substitutes olds for news. Aircraft component manufacturer ASCO’s production is hit by ransomware. Hacking back is back, in Congress. Why don’t people patch? An...

TA505 and Fin8 are both up to their old ways, with some new tricks in their criminal bag. A reminder about social engineering and Google Calendar. A new assertiveness is promised in US cyber operations, as the Administration “widens the aperture.” Updates on the security concerns that surround Huawei and ZTE. And Radiohead takes a different approach to online extortion--just render what they’re ho...

Russia says shrapnel from America’s war on that nice company Huawei is “destroying the world.” Russia also tells Tinder to fork over user pictures and messages. A Recorded Future study outlines the case for regarding Huawei as a security risk. US Customs and Border Protection discloses a breach of images collected at a border-crossing point. Crooks are taking advantage of Gmail features. Notes on...

MuddyWater shows renewed activity--no zero-days and no exotic malware, just clever approaches and determined social engineering. Spam is serving up payloads that exploit an old Microsoft Office vulnerability. Russian-sponsored disinformation has been romping freely through YouTube. Some back-and-forth over Huawei: Washington isn’t relenting, but some relief for US companies may be forthcoming. And...

Researchers at AT&T Alien Labs have been tracking a new malware family they've named "Xwo" that's scanning systems for default credentials and vulnerable web services.  Tom Hegel is security researcher with AT&T Alien Labs, and he share their findings. The original research is here: https://www.alienvault.com/blogs/labs-research/xwo-a-python-based-bot-scanner Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

The Australian National University hack and data loss look to many observers like the work of Chinese intelligence services. The GoldBrute botnet is scanning vulnerable RDP servers. MuddyWater is back, undeterred by leaks and learning from the best. The RIG exploit kit is delivering Buran ransomware. Achilles says he’s got the goods. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission IG looks at cyber inspections....

BlueKeep proof-of-concept exploits have been developed, and people are urged to patch. An annoying, disruptive advertising plug-in comes bundled with a couple of hundred Android apps in the Play Store. The EU’s Moscow embassy seems to have been the focus of Russian cyber espionage since 2017. Influence operations feature a small core of sites surrounded by many amplifying accounts. A possible moti...

Another medical testing firm is hit by the third-party breach at AMCA. More officials say there’s no EternalBlue involved in Baltimore’s ransomware attack. (And that attack may have involved some doxing, too--investigation is underway.) Real hacking isn’t like the movies. It’s alive: Frankenstein malware, that is. Huawei offers a no-spy agreement. The draft US Data Strategy is out. Really, you sho...

Jason, an Iranian brute-forcing tool, has been leaked. A third-party breach affects customer and patient data held by Quest Diagnostics. Eurofins Scientific is recovering from a ransomware attack. A look at Baltimore City’s ransomware infestation shows no signs of EternalBlue, security firm Armor says. Instead, it looks like “vanilla ransomware.” And the prospect of antitrust investigations drives...

Google’s cloud services recover from network congestion. GandCrab’s proprietors say they’re retiring rich at the end of the month. BlackSquid delivers the XMRig Monero miner. Updates on the Baltimore ransomware incident. Too many machines not yet patched against BlueKeep. CEO sentenced for providing criminals crypto. The US Justice Department is said to be preparing an antitrust investigation of G...

Adrian Bednarek is a senior research analyst at Independent Security Evaluators. He and his colleagues looked at weak private cryptocurrency keys on the Ethereum blockchain in an attempt to discover how and why they are being generated as well as how bad actors are taking advantage of them. The original research is here: https://www.securityevaluators.com/casestudies/ethercombing/ Learn more about...

Malicious misdirection served up from unpatched WordPress sites. A big, big set of dating site records has been found exposed online--it’s in China, but the records seem to belong to anglophones. Many other files are exposed elsewhere, too, so it’s not a single problem. Turla’s back, and still after diplomats. The International Red Cross proposes rules for cyber conflict. And Baltimore City calcul...

Malicious misdirection served up from unpatched WordPress sites. A big, big set of dating site records has been found exposed online--it’s in China, but the records seem to belong to anglophones. Many other files are exposed elsewhere, too, so it’s not a single problem. Turla’s back, and still after diplomats. The International Red Cross proposes rules for cyber conflict. And Baltimore City calcul...

Special Counsel Mueller makes his first public statement about the results of his investigation into influence operations surrounding the 2016 US Presidential campaign. He says his first statement will also be his last. FireEye identifies Iranian coordinated inauthenticity in US 2018 midterm elections, and Twitter and Facebook take down the offending accounts. Notes on the BlueKeep exploit. More P...

First American Financial suffers a data exposure, with hundreds of millions of mortgage-related documents left open to the Internet. Someone is scanning Tor for signs of BlueKeep RDP vulnerabilities. China complains about US complaints against Huawei as some major German firms rethink their dealings with Shenzhen. And no, NSA did not hold Baltimore for ransom, but Baltimore wants Washington to pic...

Chronicle researchers Juan Andres Guerrero Saade and Silas Cutler recently published research tracking the development of the Stuxnet family of malware, which ultimately led them to the GOSSIPGIRL Supra Group of threat actors.  Juan Andres Guerrero Saade joins us to share their findings. The research can be found here: https://medium.com/chronicle-blog/who-is-gossipgirl-3b4170f846c0 Learn more abo...

Stone Panda is distributing the Quasar RAT. A new strain of Mirai is out. Bitcoin prices are up, and so is the incidence of malicious cryptocurrency apps in Google Play. The US charges Wikileaks’ Julain Assagne with seventeen new counts under the Espionage Act. UK political parties are said to have poor security. Huawei’s charm offensive. Russia points with sad alarm to NATO cyber deterrence polic...

The UK and NATO send Moscow a pointed message about the consequences of meddling with either infrastructure or elections. More companies, including ARM, decide they won’t be working with Huawei. Other Chinese companies seem headed for US blacklisting. Moody’s cuts Equifax’s rating over its 2017 breach. Notes from last week’s Cyber Investing Summit. And we may not know much about art, but we know w...

Fancy Bear’s latest campaign is using malware reported to Virus Total by US Cyber Command. IBM’s X-Force looks at cybersecurity for travelers, and shares a bunch of horror stories. Security Scorecard looks at the online security of political parties in the US and Europe: some are better than others, but all could use some help. Updates on Huawei and other Chinese companies facing US sanctions. And...

BlackWater is snooping around the Middle East. It’s evasive, and it looks a lot like the more familiar MuddyWater threat actor. TeamViewer turns out to have been hacked, and the perpetrators look like the proprietors of the Winnti backdoor. An Android app is behaving badly. Another unsecured database is found hanging out on the Internet. There’s a free decryptor out for a strain of ransomware, but...