Tag Archive for: Finds

court finds teenagers carried out hacking spree

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A court has found an 18-year-old from Oxford was a part of an international cyber-crime gang responsible for a hacking spree against major tech firms.

Arion Kurtaj was a key member of the Lapsus$ group which hacked the likes of Uber, Nvidia and Rockstar Games.

A court heard Kurtaj leaked clips of the unreleased Grand Theft Auto 6 game while on bail in a Travelodge hotel.

The audacious attacks by Lapsus$ in 2021 and 2022 shocked the cyber security world.

Kurtaj is autistic and psychiatrists deemed him not fit to stand trial so he did not appear in court to give evidence.

The jury were asked to determine whether or not he did the acts alleged – not if he did it with criminal intent.

Another 17-year-old who is also autistic was convicted for his involvement in the activities of the Lapsus$ gang but can not be named because of his age.

The group from the UK, and allegedly Brazil, was described in court as “digital bandits”.

The gang – thought to mostly be teenagers – used con-man like tricks as well as computer hacking to gain access to multinational corporations such as Microsoft, the technology giant and digital banking group Revolut.

During their spree the hackers regularly celebrated their crimes publicly and taunted victims on the social network app Telegram in English and Portuguese.

The trial was held in Southwark Crown Court in London for seven weeks.

Hacking spree one

Jurors heard that the unnamed teenager started hacking with Kurtaj in July 2021 having met online.

Kurtaj aided by Lapsus$ associates, hacked the servers and data files of telecoms company BT and EE, the mobile operator, before demanding a $4m (£3.1m) ransom on 1 August 2021.

Lapsus text message

The hackers sent out threatening text messages to 26,000 EE customers

No ransom was paid but the court heard that the 17-year-old and Kurtaj used stolen SIM details from five victims to steal a total of nearly £100,000 from their crytpocurrency accounts which were secured by their compromised mobile phone SIM identities.

Both defendants were initially arrested on 22nd January 2022, then released under investigation.

Hacking spree two

That did not deter the duo who continued hacking with Lapsus$ and successfully breached Nvidia, a Silicon Valley tech giant…

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ZeroFox Releases Brand Protection Trends Report, Finds 164% Increase in Cyber Threats Targeting … | News

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WASHINGTON, July 31, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In our increasingly interconnected digital world, brands face a growing array of external cybersecurity threats that can jeopardize their reputation, customers’ trust, and financial bottom line. According to the latest trend report from ZeroFox (Nasdaq: ZFOX), an enterprise software-as-a-service leader in external cybersecurity, digital threats targeting brands increased by 164% between the first and second quarters of 2023 – a significant jump that underscores the cruciality of securing an organization’s brand against digital risks such as impersonations and fraud.

In the 2023 Brand Protection Trend Report, ZeroFox Intelligence analyzed threat actor behavior targeting organizations’ brands in the second quarter of 2023. The report highlights a concerning quarter-over-quarter spike in both domain and executive impersonations seeking to exploit the trust that brands have built with their customers, causing significant damage to brand reputation and customer loyalty. Brands are a lucrative pawn for threat actors, as hijacking an already-established brand makes it easier to deceive victims in various fraud, scam, and otherwise malicious campaigns.

Key Findings

Among the key findings in the report, ZeroFox Intelligence observed:

  • A 35% increase in verified alerts for brand threats related to fraud, scams, and piracy quarter-over-quarter across the ZeroFox customer base, and a nearly 20% increase in brand-related impersonations.
  • A 26% increase in fraudulent activity tied to brands observed in this quarter; more specifically, fraudulent job postings identified rose by over 50%.
  • A nearly 20% increase in spoofed domains increased in the second quarter of 2023 versus the first quarter, with just over one-third tied to phishing campaigns.
  • A 22% increase in key personnel and corporate social media impersonation accounts with a biography, name and image to legitimize these profiles; those that used a biography with a name only increased 35%.

“Because job seekers and consumers often blame targeted organizations for scams that abuse their brand, these organizations must proactively protect against domain and…

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Startling Security Report Finds Solar Power Systems Are Ripe For Hacking

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startling security report finds solar power systems are ripe for hacking

If you have a solar roof and power management system, you might be vulnerable to a cyberattack depending on how the system was implemented. However, this problem is not limited to solar but also includes wind and hydroelectric systems connected to the internet, which all make juicy targets for a threat actor.

Researchers at Cyble have become increasingly concerned about the expansive growth and interconnectedness of domestic green energy solutions. The group reports that threat actors might exploit vulnerabilities or misconfigurations of the interconnections in times of conflict or heightened tensions.

exposure startling security report finds solar power systems are ripe for hacking 708

These sorts of attacks, if widespread, might lead to “destabilizing the targeted region, inflicting economic disruption, undermining energy security, and securing a strategic advantage.” This is entirely possible, too, as the researchers discovered 130,000 internet-exposed photovoltaic diagnostic and monitoring systems globally, or in other words, many solar systems alone are exposed to the internet, ignoring wind and hydroelectric systems entirely.

accessed panels startling security report finds solar power systems are ripe for hacking
These are a sample of the web panels that the researchers accessed in their hunting.

Setting aside the concerns about domestic power systems, this also highlights similar concerns regarding commercial systems that power homes that have not yet gone green. As we get into summer, an attacker could abuse the power grid, which will already be running thin, by controlling smart home devices to fluctuate power requirements. This could cause many problems, as the U.S. Government Accountability Office suggested in 2022.

Cybersecurity not only threatens our homes but that which provides them with power, water, and other essential services. We are generally wholly unprepared for these attacks, which could have lethal consequences given good malicious timing. Of course, you can do your part to keep systems up to date and, if possible, offline.

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Ransomware threat against colleges grows, survey finds

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Dive Brief: 

  • Ransomware attacks targeted the education sector more than any other industry in the last year, with 79% of surveyed higher education institutions across the world reporting being hit, according to an annual report from Sophos, a U.K.-based cybersecurity firm. 
  • Of the higher ed institutions that reported ransomware attacks, 59% said it resulted in them losing “a lot of” business and revenue. Around one-fourth, 28%, reported smaller losses. 
  • Hackers exploited system vulnerabilities in 4 in 10 higher education ransomware attacks, making them the sector’s most common root issue. Compromised credentials caused another 37% of attacks, while malicious emails led to 12% of reported incidents. 

Dive Insight: 

Sophos’ latest survey suggests that ransomware is increasingly targeting colleges and universities. In 2022’s report, only 64% of higher education institutions said they had been hit by ransomware in the past year — 15 percentage points lower than the share who reported incidents in the latest survey.

In some cases, hackers are ramping up their efforts to get colleges to pay for the return of their data. 

Knox College, a private liberal arts institution in Illinois, made headlines late last year when a hacker group broke into its computer system and accessed student data. The group that took credit for the breach, known as Hive, emailed students saying they had retrieved “personal information, medical records, psychological assessments, and many other sensitive data,” and threatened to sell their social security numbers. 

The attack spurred multiple lawsuits from students, who allege that Knox failed to follow the latest security practices to shield sensitive data. 

“Sophos’ latest report is a clarion reminder that ransomware remains a major threat, both in scope and scale,” said Megan Stifel, chief strategy officer at the Institute for Security and…

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