Tag Archive for: Cuts

A Major Internet Backbone Company Cuts Off Russia

/in


Russia’s War of choice against Ukraine drew global attention this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin continuing to escalate the conflict as the United States and Europe moved to drastically isolate the Kremlin. Though the front lines of battle have not been digital, Ukraine emphasized this week that Russia is pummeling the embattled country’s computer networks with hacking attempts. After years of such activity, Ukrainian internet infrastructure is resilient, and the Ukrainian government is also experimenting with the formation of a volunteer “IT Army” to organize recruits from all over the world for its cause.

Ukrainians have been relying on the messaging platform Telegram to get much of their news and official government updates about the situation, and hacktivists have been attempting to make their mark in the conflict as well, though their actions are often dwarfed by the reality of kinetic war.

We’ve got the story of an online troll who used tactics such as misleading press releases and tricky domain names in an effort to sabotage competitors in the nonalcoholic spirit industry. And the startup Kytch, which sold a device for fixing McDonald’s ice cream machines before the fast food giant crushed its business, is suing the Golden aAches for $900 million in damages. 

But wait, there’s more. We’ve rounded up all the news here that we didn’t break or cover in depth this week. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

US internet infrastructure company Cogent Communications said on Friday that it is ending relationships with its Russian customers, including the state-owned Russian telecoms Rostelecom and TransTelekom. The global internet is interdependent, and Russia has other backbone providers besides Cogent to stay connected to the world, but the company is one of the biggest. Cogent said it weighed the risks that some people in Russia will lose global connectivity against the possibility that the Russian government will benefit from Cogent’s service in mounting disinformation campaigns and hacks against Ukrainian targets. “Our goal is not to hurt anyone. It’s just to not empower the Russian government to have another tool in…

Source…

Amazon Cuts Off Services To Spyware Company Over Alleged Hacking, Surveilling Of Journalists And Activists

/in


Amazon Web Services (AWS) banned Israeli technology firm NSO Group from its services Monday following allegations the firm was involved in surveillance of activists and journalists.

The tech giant cut off NSO from its cloud infrastructure services after an investigation by Amnesty International and other media organizations revealed NSO’s spyware product Pegasus may have been installed on the mobile devices of several journalists and activists, VICE reported. A forensic analysis performed by Amnesty and reviewed by Citizen Lab found that AWS’ service CloudFront was used to deploy Pegasus spyware into mobile devices.

“When we learned of this activity, we acted quickly to shut down the relevant infrastructure and accounts,” an AWS spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement.

The investigation alleged NSO’s spyware was deployed against journalists and activists by regimes often characterized as repressive, such as Hungary and Azerbaijan. Those targeted reportedly included women close to Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist murdered in October 2018, according to an Amnesty statement.

NSO denied the allegations in a statement to several media organizations, claiming it thoroughly reviews the human rights records of its clients, and telling The Washington Post it had already canceled contracts with two customers over human rights abuses.

CloudFront is a “content delivery network” that allows users to securely transfer data, in this case spyware, to other users, according to its website. The product “offers the most advanced security capabilities,” protecting shared content and offering high transfer speeds.

“The use of cloud services protects NSO Group from some Internet scanning techniques,” Amnesty said in the analysis.

VICE had previously reported on NSO using Amazon servers to deploy spyware in May 2020, when the firm allegedly impersonated a Facebook security team to upload its hacking software…

Source…

Air Force cuts number of occupations available for reenlistment bonuses as retention flourishes

/in


The Air Force is making good on its goal to slim down on its diet of airmen after seeing extremely high retention rates.

A little more than two weeks ago, the Air Force’s top personnel officer, Lt. Gen. Brian Kelly, said the Air Force will start to take measures to steady its manning levels. Now, in response, the Air Force is slashing the number of occupations eligible for a reenlistment bonus by close to half.

In 2020, 72 jobs within the Air Force were able to get some extra cash if they reupped their contracts. That number will now decrease to 37 in 2021.

“Overall retention levels are at record highs and manning within many of our career fields is healthy,” Kelly, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services, said in a release. “This reduces our requirement and opportunity to utilize retention bonuses to the same extent.”

The reenlistment program is designed to improve retention of experienced airmen and space professionals.

The Air Force attributes the high retention numbers in part to the economic environment around COVID-19.

Occupations that will still receive bonuses include a handful of pilot and maintainer positions, para-rescue, contracting, mental health services, some cyber positions, surgeons and explosive ordnance disposal.

Occupations that fell off the list include special mission pilots and cyber warfare operators.

In total, nine specialties were added and 40 were taken off the list.

“Manning levels have, in some cases, exceeded our requirements,” Kelly said earlier this month on a call with reporters. “In many areas, we probably don’t need as many offerings for the bonuses and opportunities for those retentions incentives as we’ve had in the past.”

The Air Force plans to spend about $55 million of retention bonuses in 2021.

For end strength in general, the Air Force was supposed to grow by about 900 to 333,700 active duty airmen in 2020. Kelly said the service met that goal, and it actually ended up about 900 above that benchmark.

“Over the last five years, we’ve been able to build back about 23,000 members back into the inventory to…

Source…

Trump aide O’Brien cuts Europe trip short to deal with cyber hack

/in


The sweeping attacks, first reported by Reuters on Sunday, prompted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and thousands of businesses to scramble to investigate and respond to the hacking campaign that officials suspect was directed by the Russian government.

RELATED: Biden taps former rival Pete Buttigieg for U.S. transportation secretary

O’Brien “is holding NSC meetings tonight and tomorrow morning and will convene a high-level interagency meeting this week,” National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot said.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, including the top Republican and Democratic members of the Senate commerce panel, wrote a letter to the directors of the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency requesting a report about the extent of the attacks.

Newsletter signup for email alerts

Citing people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported on Sunday that hackers backed by a foreign government had been monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury Department and the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency that decides internet and telecommunications policy.

Technology company SolarWinds, which was the key steppingstone used by the hackers, said up to 18,000 of its customers had downloaded a compromised software update that allowed hackers to spy unnoticed on businesses and agencies for almost nine months.

In their letter, the senators asked for, among other things, a list of all federal agencies that are customers of SolarWinds, the categories and quantities of data that were susceptible to hacking, and any confirmed cases of unauthorized access.

The letter was signed by Republican Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Commerce Committee; Senator Maria Cantwell, the committee’s top Democrat; and four other senators.

O’Brien had visited Israel and France on his trip but canceled stops in Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Britain….

Source…