Tag Archive for: 19th

The Week in Ransomware – November 19th 2021

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Ransomware

While last week was full of arrests and law enforcement actions, this week has been much quieter, with mostly new research released.

Security firms released reports on the types of cryptomixers used by ransomware gangs, a detailed report on Conti, and how Russian ransomware gangs are starting to work with Chinese hackers.

Today, US regulators also ordered banks to report cyber attacks within 36 hours if they impact their operations, the ability to deliver banking products and services, or the US financial sector’s stability.

Finally, a Tor negotiation site for the Conti ransomware gang was taken down, likely due to the release of its IP address in the PRODAFT report.

Contributors and those who provided new ransomware information and stories this week include: @DanielGallagher, @fwosar, @struppigel, @FourOctets, @malwrhunterteam, @billtoulas, @Seifreed, @Ionut_Ilascu, @serghei, @jorntvdw, @PolarToffee, @demonslay335, @VK_Intel, @LawrenceAbrams, @malwareforme, @BleepinComputer, @intel_bo7, @_aftrdrk, @thepacketrat, @SophosLabs, @FlashpointIntel, @sucurisecurity, @Intel471Inc, @_CPResearch_, @BrettCallow, @emsisoft, @PRODAFT, @joetidy, @RepMaloney, @siri_urz, @fbgwls245, @pcrisk, @Amigo_A_, and @AdvIntel.

November 13th 2021

Ransomware uses IRC for negotiations

dnwls0719 found a new ransomware that appends the .dst extension and expects users to use IRC over Tor to negotiate.

Ransomware using IRC

November 14th 2021

US Education Dept urged to boost K-12 schools’ ransomware defenses

The US Department of Education and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were urged this week to more aggressively strengthen cybersecurity protections at K-12 schools across the nation to keep up with a massive wave of attacks.

New RansomNow ransomware

Amigo-A found a new ransomware in our forums called RansomNow that drops the HELP – README TO UNLOCK FILES.txt ransom note and does not append a new extension.

November 15th 2021

Moses Staff hackers wreak havoc on Israeli orgs with ransomless encryptions

A new hacker group named Moses Staff has recently claimed responsibility for numerous attacks against Israeli entities, which appear politically motivated as they do not make any ransom payment demands.

New STOP Ransomware…

Source…

This Week In Techdirt History: July 19th – 25th

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Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, MPAA emails revealed a plan for an anti-google smear campaign run through the Today Show and the Wall Street Journal, Sony/Soundcloud pulled out the copyright takedown hammer over entries in an official remix contest, a UK court ruling flip-flopped on CD ripping for personal use, and we joined IMDb and Reddit in getting hit by a bogus DMCA takedown from a German film distributor — though this wasn’t the dumbest takedown of the week, with a company representing Universal Pictures managing to accidentally DMCA the localhost IP address. Meanwhile the UK police admitted to investigating journalists for covering the Snowden leaks, the New York Times falsely claimed ISIS was using encryption and couriers because of Snowden, and a judge ordered the CIA to pay the hefty legal fees of a FOIA requester.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2010, the US Copyright Group was moving to phase two of its lawsuit shakedown plan, human rights groups were speaking out about the huge problems with the USTR’s “special 301” process, and America’s IP czar was pointing fingers at China. A Dutch court upheld the ruling that The Pirate Bay must block Dutch users while the Pirate Party in Sweden was launching its own “Pirate ISP”, a Canadian court let Perfect 10’s latest case against Google move forward, and the BSA was using totally made up stats to try to change copyright laws in South Africa. Meanwhile, we wrote about how weak anti-SLAPP laws don’t help anyone, while the Senate in the US passed the SPEECH Act to shut down libel tourism.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, the Associated Press was blatantly misrepresenting BitTorrent, while News Corp was buying in to sketchy adware. We wrote about how the recording industry believes what it wants to believe, and asked why public schools should be doing copyright dirty work for entertainment companies. A silly but unsurprising backlash emerged against mobile phones due to their possible use by terrorists, while rumors were brewing about the iPod Video, even though most people still weren’t sold on mobile video as a concept. And voters in Louisiana saw through telco threats and FUD, and voted for a muni fiber network.

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This Week In Techdirt History: January 19th – 25th

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Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, newly released documents from the Snowden leak revealed how the UK’s GCHG collected emails from journalists and used compromised hardware to get data from iPhones, and how the NSA harvested data from other surveillance agencies. We also learned more about the DEA’s role in the surveillance world, while the FBI was touting another of its own manufactured-then-foiled terror plots as evidence that the PATRIOT Act should be renewed.

Meanwhile, a European Parliament report called for wide-ranging copyright reform that was actually good, a court soundly rejected the attempt by Omega to abuse copyright to stop Costco selling its watches, and Cory Doctorow rejoined the EFF to lead a project to eradicate DRM. Also, James Bond entered the public domain in Canada, which is worth highlighting because we came up with a darn good headline if I do say so myself.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2010, the US was trying to strongarm Costa Rica into adopting draconian IP laws by blocking sugar from the US market, Italian lawmakers were pushing their own draconian provision to require government authorization for all video uploads, Oxford University made the bizarre decision to ban students from using Spotify, and EU trade negotiators were calling Canada’s public comment period on copyright law “a tactic to confuse”. BPI was insisting that UK ISPs were overstating the cost of a three strikes program, and the IFPI was loudly complaining about piracy in its annual report that conveniently omitted its own study showing file sharers also buy lots. ACTA secrecy was in full swing, with bloggers getting kicked out of consultations in Mexico and the UK government telling MPs they couldn’t see the details. And in one better-than-nothing-I-guess development, the judge who oversaw the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case reduced the completely insane damages of $ 80,000 per song to the less astonishing (but still arbitrary) figure of $ 2,250 per song.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, radio broadcasters were gearing up to be the newest entrants in the already overcrowded world of music download stores, TV broadcasters were trying to come up with ways to compete with DVRs, and Sony’s Ken Kutaragi surprisingly admitted that DRM held up the company’s innovation. The “war on file sharing” nabbed its first prisoners in the form of two men who plead guilty to “conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement”, while one state senator in California was promoting the idea that developers of file-sharing programs should be jailed.

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This Week In Techdirt History: May 19th – 25th

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Five Years Ago

This week in 2014, we watched as the proposed NSA reform bill — the USA Freedom Act — got watered down by the House to the point that every civil liberties organization pulled its support for the law, and it started to look like Reps. Rogers and Ruppersberger had pulled a fast one on us all. The House inevitably passed the now-useless bill (even without the votes of half of its original co-sponsors), so attention had to turn to the Senate and other ways of fighting back against the NSA, like a small victory in freeing the NIST from collaborating with the agency on encryption standards.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2009, various Attorneys General were still on the warpath against Craigslist (even those who had successfully busted criminals on the site) after it gave in to pressure the previous week. While some tried to draw odd conclusions from Craigslist’s cooperation, the company was also fighting back and suing for declaratory relief against one AG. And we had to wonder as they did: why Craigslist, not newspapers or other websites?

Meanwhile, Perfect 10 was shot down yet again in an attempt to hold search engines liable for image thumbnails, while Joel Tenenbaum’s lawyer was gearing up for a likely defeat with plans to defend downloading as fair use. And we read one pro-copyright book that surprised us by relying heavily on… Techdirt comments to make its case about how bad the pirates are.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2004, Jack Valenti was feuding with Quentin Tarantino over the latter’s failure to condemn movie piracy, Italy was getting ready to put people in jail for file sharing, and California was considering doing the same. Google was making waves on two fronts: then-brand-new Gmail’s unprecedented offering of 1GB of storage was spurring the competition to at least pretend to do the same (while a typo on Gmail itself led some people to think they might be getting a terabyte), and the Google IPO was leading absolutely everyone to try to find a way to benefit from the hype (not least the list of underwriters, which was basically all of Wall Street). But, the guy who had been selling fake “pre-IPO shares” to Wall Street insiders was one of two scammers facing jailtime, too.

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