Tag Archive for: DOJ

Mueller investigated ‘a member of the news media’ suspected of participating in the 2016 plot to hack and share Dems’ emails, the DOJ said

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Robert Mueller et al. posing for the camera: Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in the Rayburn House Office Building July 24, 2019 in Washington, DC. Mueller will later testify before the House Intelligence Committee in back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill. Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images

© Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images
Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in the Rayburn House Office Building July 24, 2019 in Washington, DC. Mueller will later testify before the House Intelligence Committee in back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill. Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images

  • The DOJ released a new amendment regarding Mueller’s Russia investigation.
  • It said he investigated “a member of the news media” suspected in a plot to hack and share Dems’ emails.
  • The DOJ said it issued a subpoena in 2018 authorizing the seizure of phone records from that person.
  • See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller had investigated an unidentified “member of the news media” who was suspected of hacking senior Democrats’ emails accounts and leaking their contents during the 2016 election, The New York Times reported, citing a new Justice Department release.

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The DOJ announced the news in an amendment published on Wednesday to a report about the department’s use of subpoenas and other legal tools used in 2018 against members of the media.

Between 2017 and 2019, Mueller led an investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 general election. It was initiated partly because email accounts belonging to senior Democratic figures, including John Podesta, were hacked and subsequently leaked.

Mueller ultimately charged 12 Russian security officers for the email hack, and accused WikiLeaks of disseminating them with the purpose of interfering in the 2016 election. The report also did not find sufficient evidence to charge anyone from former President Donald Trump’s campaign with illegally conspiring or coordinating with Russia.

The Wednesday DOJ amendment said the department had issued a subpoena against an unidentified person in the news media “in connection with an investigation into an alleged conspiracy involving persons or entities associated with a foreign government hacking the computers of a United States political party’s central organization.”

The amendment did not specify on what grounds the person was…

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DOJ charges security exec for hacking a Georgia healthcare company in 2018

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A security company executive has been charged for hacking into (PDF) the Gwinnett Medical Center’s network on or around September 27th, 2018. According to the Department of Justice, Vikas Singla from Georgia conducted a cyberattack on the not-for-profit network of healthcare providers in part for commercial advantage and personal financial gain. Singla was the chief operating officer of a network security company in metro-Atlanta — the DOJ didn’t name the company, but the profile matches that of Securolytics — that served the healthcare industry. He (and his yet-to-be-named associates) allegedly disrupted GMC’s phone service, obtained information from a digitizing device and disrupted network printer service during the attack.

While the DOJ didn’t dive into the specifics of the case, it was reported back in 2018 that GMC was investigating a possible data breach that led to the leak of patient information online. The attackers also threatened GMC’s staff and shamed the provider on the internet. Now-deleted blog posts on Securolytics’ website written by Singla describe attacking targets in healthcare, presumably to fix problems with their security. How that activity is linked to the data breach reported in 2018, or the charges filed this week, is still unclear.

The executive was indicted by a federal grand jury on June 8th and was charged with 17 counts of intentional damage to a protected computer, with each charge carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. He was also charged with one count of obtaining information by computer from a protected computer, which has a max sentence of five years in prison.

Special Agent in Charge Chris Hacker of the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office said:

“This cyberattack on a hospital not only could have had disastrous consequences, but patients’ personal information was also compromised. The FBI and our law enforcement partners are determined to hold accountable, those who allegedly put people’s health and safety at risk while driven by greed.”

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DOJ Recovers Most of Colonial Pipeline’s Ransom Payment

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Photo: POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Close to a month after Colonial Pipeline paid hackers the equivalent of $4.4 million in order to restore services for their massive gasoline operation, the Department of Justice announced that it had recovered the majority of the ransom payment.

After hackers affiliated with a group known as DarkSide locked Colonial out of their computer system leading to fuel shortages throughout the East coast, the energy firm decided in early May to pay the Russia-based group 75 Bitcoin, the equivalent of $4.4 million at the time. On Monday, the DOJ announced that 63.7 Bitcoin had been seized; while that represents 85 percent of the ransom payment, the value is now at $2.3 million, due to a fall in the cryptocurrency’s price in May.

“By going after the entire ecosystem that fuels ransomware and digital currency, we will continue to use all of our tools and all of our resources to increase the costs and the consequences of ransomware attacks and other cyber-enabled attacks,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said at a press conference on Monday, referring to the type of the attack executed against Colonial. The FBI also revealed Monday in an affidavit that they were holding a key to unlock a bitcoin wallet that had most of the funds, although they did not announce exactly how they were able to find the key; Bitcoin transactions are designed to be untraceable. According to Reuters, “the bureau had tracked the bitcoin through multiple wallets, using the public blockchain and tools.”

By announcing that the Department of Justice was going after the “entire ecosystem” of ransomware attacks, Monaco suggested an escalation of the tactics used by the government to stop the hacking that has disrupted many business sectors this year. In April, the DOJ created a Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force to mitigate the breaches that have emerged as a national security threat over the past year. In an internal memo launching the initiative, the department will target “the entire criminal ecosystem around ransomware, including…

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