Tag Archive for: greater

Iran’s internet price rises, and so does the fear of greater censorship

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Iranians could pay up to 34% more for the internet in 2024 as providers get the green light from the government to increase their tariffs. 

Deemed as a move to balance persistent high levels of inflation, many commentators fear that less affordable internet rates could exacerbate ongoing issues with online censorship while discouraging citizens from accessing digital services.

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Evolving China-based cyberwarfare demands greater regional resilience

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In a speech at this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese set out a balanced approach to handling China’s aggressive regional expansion: ‘Australia’s goal is not to prepare for war,’ he said, ‘but to prevent it through deterrence and reassurance and building resilience in the region.’

He went on to say that Australia and its regional allies need to ‘make it crystal clear that when it comes to any unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force, be it in Taiwan, the South China Sea, the East China Sea or elsewhere, the risk of conflict will always far outweigh any potential reward’.

China has recently shown a greater willingness to test the boundaries of physical confrontation. In the cyber domain, however, it has long engaged in aggressive tactics, where the rewards significantly outweigh the potential risks. This is bad news for Australian government organisations, local companies and their counterparts across Southeast Asia, which are having to divert significant resources to protect themselves against evolving Chinese cyber espionage, intellectual property theft and other cyberattacks.

CrowdStrike Intelligence is highly confident that China-nexus adversaries will continue to target both Southeast Asia and Australia in the government, telecommunications, military and civil-society sectors in support of national intelligence-collection priorities. We also expect to see a ramping up of cyber espionage in the AUKUS area as Australia strengthens its defence ties with the US and UK.

Concern around China-based cyber activity has only grown. The extraordinary disclosure in May that VANGUARD PANDA (better known as Volt Typhoon), a China-sponsored adversary group, had been lying dormant in US critical infrastructure networks for at least months suggests persistent assertiveness from China-based cyber actors in support of China’s cyber goals.

To reference the prime minister’s assessment, building resilience and reassurance is vital to deterring such attacks. Understanding more about China-based cyber activities in the region is an important place to…

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#mWISE: FBI Director Urges Greater Private-Public Collaboration

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“I’m here to recruit you.” Was Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, really joking when he said that hiring people for the FBI was the reason for his presence at the Mandiant mWISE conference?

During his opening keynote speech on September 18, Wray explained how collaborating with the private sector has changed the FBI’s approach to combating cybercrime.

He said that the 9/11 terrorist attacks led the Bureau to open itself more to other parties, first in its counter-terrorism missions and then in other areas, including cyberspace.

“Today, our strategy is informed by where we sit, at the center of a cyber ecosystem that stretches from the defensive side, with the private sector but also agencies like the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), all the way over to, on the offensive side, the CIA, the NSA and our foreign partners,” Wray added.

Over the past few years, the FBI has conducted several joint investigations and law enforcement operations in cyberspace, which encompass an increasing number of partners, including foreign cybersecurity agencies from ally countries and private organizations.

“The bottom line is: it doesn’t matter who gets the credit as long as the job gets done,” said Wray.

Recent law enforcement operations, such as the Hive ransomware or the QakBot malware loader takedowns, included partners like Zscaler, who helped with the investigation.

Victim Organizations Encouraged to Work with the FBI

However, the prime example of such public-private collaborations highlighted by the FBI director is the 2022 takedown of the Cyclops Blink botnet, allegedly built by the Russian military agency (GRU). 

This is because, this time, the private partner WatchGuard was directly involved in the malicious campaign.

Wray explained: “The GRU’s Sandworm team had managed to implant malware on thousands of WatchGuard firewall devices worldwide. Those firewalls were primarily used by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Our collaboration with WatchGuard allowed us to reverse-engineer the malware and develop and execute a sophisticated technical operation, severing GRU’s ability to communicate with the command-and-control…

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Third-party ransomware attack impacts UK’s Greater Manchester Police

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BleepingComputer reports that the UK’s Greater Manchester Police has been impacted by a data breach stemming from a ransomware attack against a service supplier, which also caters to other UK organizations.

Information compromised in the incident includes the personal information of some of the police department’s employees but financial data is unlikely to have been impacted, according to GMP Assistant Chief Constable Colin McFarlane.

“…[W]e have contacted the Information Commissioners Office and are doing everything we can to ensure employees are kept informed, their questions are answered, and they feel supported,” McFarlane added.

Such an intrusion follows third-party breaches affecting the UK’s Metropolitan Police and the Police Service of Northern Ireland during the past month.

Metropolitan Police had data from 47,000 police officers and staff, including names, ranks, and vetting levels, exposed after a cyberattack against ID card and access pass manufacturer Digital ID, while 10,000 police officers of PSNI also had their personally identifiable information stolen, some of which were already leaked online.

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