Tag Archive for: creates

Hacking group Squad303 creates tool to send random Russian phones anti-war messages

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“We the people of the world have a message to the Russian nation. A nation that is to pay a huge price because of the shameful decision of the dictator Putin to attack an independent Ukraine by armed forces,” the website states.

“However, nearly 150 million Russians do not know the truth about the causes or course of the war in Ukraine. It is fed with the lies of the Kremlin propaganda. There is no free media in Russia and the internet is censored.”

When one of the sending options is clicked on, a random recipient is chosen and a stock message from a selection is pre-populated in Russian for sending with a single click.

One potential email message describes the Ukraine invasion as a “fatal step” leading to huge human losses that undermines the foundations of international security.

“The responsibility for unleashing a new war in Europe lies entirely with Russia,” it continues.

“There is no rational justification for this war. Attempts to use the situation in Donbass as a pretext for launching a military operation do not inspire any confidence.”

Squad303 said they had received direct evidence that people using the service were doing a “great job”.

“The Kremlin is afraid of you,” they wrote on Twitter.

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Ukraine creates ‘IT army’ to hack Russian websites amid military operations

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Facing massive cyber-attacks from Russia-sponsored threat actors, Ukraine has now assembled an ‘IT army’ tasked with specific cyber challenges, which reached nearly 2 lakh users on Telegram on Monday.


Called the ‘IT Army of Ukraine’, it is also using the Telegram account to reach out to technology leaders to help the country fight Russian cyber-attacks and shut down Russian sites and their agents.





“A call out on the channel to shut down the API for Sberbank, one of Russia’s major banks, appears to have come into play, with the site currently offline,” reports TechCrunch.


The Ukrainian government officials are also endorsing the ‘IT Army’, tweeting out the Telegram link.


“We are creating an IT army. We need digital talents. There will be tasks for everyone. We continue to fight on the cyber front. The first task is on the channel for cyber specialists,” tweeted Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Transformation.


The cyber war between Russia and Ukraine has intensified, with Russia using a new destructive malware to permanently destroy data on systems belonging to Ukrainian organisations.


Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to hacking groups increasing their activities globally. While Russia-backed hackers have already hit several Ukrainian government websites and banks, a leading hacking group, Anonymous, has declared itself aligned with “Western allies”, targeting operations in Russia.


“The Anonymous collective is officially in cyber war against the Russian government,” the group tweeted.


According to the IBM Security X-Force team, they have obtained a sample of the new and destructive ‘HermeticWiper’ malware being deleted on Ukrainian systems.


Belarusian state-sponsored hackers are also targeting the private email addresses of Ukrainian military personnel amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.


Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) said in a Facebook post that a mass phishing campaign is targeting the private accounts belonging to Ukrainian military personnel.


–IANS


na/dpb


 

(Only the headline and picture of this report…

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Computer-Security Incident Rule Creates New Notification Requirements for Banking Organizations and Bank Service Providers | Steptoe & Johnson PLLC

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On November 18, 2021, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a joint final rule (the “Computer-Security Incident Rule” or the “Final Rule”) establishing computer-security notification requirements for banking organizations and their bank service providers. The Final Rule, which has an effective date of April 22, 2022, and mandatory compliance date of May 1, 2022, contains two major components.

 

First, a “banking organization” must notify its primary federal regulator of any “computer-security incident” that rises to the level of a “notification incident” no later than 36 hours after the banking organization determines the notification incident has occurred. Second, a “bank service provider” must notify each affected banking organization customer as soon as possible of a “computer-security incident” that has caused, or is reasonably likely to cause, a material service disruption or degradation for four or more hours. The purpose of the Computer-Security Incident Rule’s notification requirements is to provide earlier awareness of emerging threats to banking organizations and the broader financial system.

 

The Final Rule defines a “computer-security incident” as an occurrence that, “(i) results in actual or potential harm to the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of an information system or the information that the system processes, stores, or transmits; or (ii) constitutes a violation or imminent threat of violation of security policies, security procedures, or acceptable use policies.”

 

A “computer-security incident” that would rise to the level of a “notification incident” triggering the Final Rule’s notification requirements includes, but is not limited to:

  • A ransomware or malware attack that encrypts a core banking system or backup data;
  • A large scale distributed denial of service attack that disrupts customer account access for an extended period of time;
  • A failed system upgrade or change that results in widespread user outages for customers and banking organization…

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Intrusion Preclusion: BIS Issues Long-Awaited Controls on Cybersecurity Items, Creates New License Exception | Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

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On October 21, 2021, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued an interim final rule (the rule) implementing expanded export controls on cybersecurity items based on the belief that these items “could be used for surveillance, espionage, or other actions that disrupt, deny or degrade the network or devices on it.” The new controls on cybersecurity items stem from the 2013 addition by the Wassenaar Arrangement1 (WA) of cybersecurity items, including intrusion software to Wassenaar’s list of controlled items. Public comments in 2015 indicating significant concerns over BIS’s implementation and scope of the proposed controls resulted in renegotiation of these controls at the WA’s 2017 meeting. Last week’s rule implements the WA 2017 controls. The rule is intended to prevent malicious “intrusion software” from being exported to certain countries of concern without a BIS license and not to hinder responses to cybersecurity flaws and incidents.

New Cybersecurity Related ECCNs

The rule creates new controls on hardware and software (ECCNs 4A005 and 4D004, respectively) specially designed or modified for the generation, command and control, or delivery of intrusion software. The EAR defines intrusion software as software specially designed or modified to avoid detection by monitoring tools2 or to defeat protective countermeasures,3 of a computer or network capable device (such as a mobile device or smart meter). Intrusion software either 1) extracts data or information (from the computer or network-capable device) or modifies system or user data or 2) modifies the standard execution path of a program or process in order to allow the execution of externally provided instructions. According to the proposed rule, it does not include any of the following: Hypervisors, debuggers or Software Reverse Engineering (SRE) tools; Digital Rights Management (DRM) software; or software designed to be installed by manufacturers, administrators, or users, for the purposes of asset tracking or recovery.

The rule also adds paragraph 5A001.j “IP network communications surveillance systems or equipment” to ECCN 5A001 which is similar to controls on…

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