Cyber-attack hackers threaten to share US police informant data – BBC News
Cyber-attack hackers threaten to share US police informant data BBC News
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Hackers Inject Malware Into Widely-Used Password Management App
Companies around the globe are scrambling to update critical credentials this weekend The reason: the popular password management app Passwordstate fell victim to hackers, who injected malware via the app’s update mechanism.
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Click Studios, the developer of Passwordstate, alerted its customers about the incident late this week immediately after it was discovered. The email noted that the breach occurred between April 20 and 22.
During that time, the attackers “[used] sophisticated techniques” to insert a malicious file alongside legitimate Passwordstate updates. At this point in time it appears as though the malicious update did indeed make its way onto Passwordstate users’ computers.
Full Impact Difficult To Assess
In its online Passwordstate brochure, Click Studios reports “Empowering more than 29,000 Customers and 370,000 Security & IT Professionals globally.” With numbers like those in play, it could take weeks or even months before the full impact of the breach is known.
Even at a small or medium organization, IT staff manage dozens if not hundreds of credentials for services and devices.
“Affected customers password records may have been harvested,” states the breach notification (PDF link). Indeed, users would do well to assume the worst even though there are some mitigating factors.
Click Studios notes that the malicious activity spanned 28 hours. Customers who did not receive an automatic update during that name should not be affected. Likewise, users who perform updates manually should be safe.
The downside is that those groups could be fairly small. Keeping software fully updated is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of good security, after all. We’ve grown to rely on automatic update systems to take the hassle out of the process for us.
Security researchers at the Denmark-based CSIS Group detected the rogue file on a system during an investigation. Once it had been delivered to a victim’s computer, the file would attempt to establish communications with a remote server to download additional malicious components.
Automatic Updates Become a Double-Edged Sword
Automatic updates are great, when they…
Hackers try to extort Apple after stealing files from manufacturer
A hacker gang has stolen files from a company that manufactures Apple products and is openly trying to extort the tech giant in exchange for not leaking them.
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Apple declined to comment on whether it intended to pay. The hackers’ extortion letter to the company remained online Thursday night.
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The Taiwanese company that was hacked, Quanta, makes a range of computer products, including the Mac Pro.
The hackers, who posted the extortion letter and three sample technical files to their blog on the dark web, are among more than a dozen prolific cybercrime organizations that in recent years have steadily hacked targets around the world, encrypting victims’ files or threatening to publish them and demanding ransom, usually in bitcoins.
While U.S. law enforcement agencies closely track the hackers behind the ransomware gangs, the organizations tend to operate in countries that don’t extradite to the U.S., particularly Russia, law enforcement agents say, making it essentially impossible to physically stop them unless the hackers travel internationally.
While ransomware attacks have become increasingly common in recent years, the extortion attempt against Apple is the rare case in which a ransomware gang targets and publicly taunts a major American brand. Most gangs either focus on smaller targets and use blogs to increase public pressure on their victims to pay or are “big game hunters” that target larger corporations for huge payouts but don’t publicize the acts, allowing the companies to save face.
The Apple attack is particularly visible as the Biden administration moves to address the proliferation of ransomware. White House officials have said they will announce a comprehensive ransomware strategy in the coming weeks that will focus on bringing international pressure on host countries to stop the gangs, and the Justice Department is reported to have formed a task force to better address the problem.
Paying ransomware is risky, because some victims still do not get their files back. Others acknowledge that they have been hacked and announce that they will not pay, as CD Projekt Red, the creator of the video game Cyberpunk 2077, did in…
Facebook says it halts hackers tied to Palestinian security
JERUSALEM (AP) — Facebook said Wednesday it has broken up a hacker network used by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ intelligence service in an attempt to keep tabs on journalists, human rights activists and government critics.
The report by the social networking giant threatened to deal another embarrassing blow to Abbas’ Fatah party weeks ahead of parliamentary elections. Fatah, plagued by infighting and public malaise, already appears poised to lose power and influence if the vote takes place next month.
In its report, Facebook said that elements linked to the Preventive Security Service “used fake and compromised accounts to create fictitious personas.” Posing as young women, journalists and political activists, they then sought “to build trust with people they targeted and trick them into installing malicious software.”
The malware, disguised as chat applications, would give the security agency access to targets’ phones, including contacts, text messages, locations and even keystrokes, Facebook said.
It said the ring, based in the West Bank, targeted people in the Palestinian territories and Syria, and to a lesser extent in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Libya.
“This persistent threat actor focused on a wide range of targets, including journalists, people opposing the Fatah-led government, human rights activists and military groups including the Syrian opposition and Iraqi military,” it said.
Mike Dvilyanski, Facebook’s head of cyber espionage investigations, said the company had used “technical signals and infrastructure” to link the network to Preventive Security. He said Facebook had “high confidence” in its findings, but declined to elaborate.
In all, he said nearly 800 people were targeted. The company said it was impossible to say how many had downloaded the malware or determine what the security agency had done with the information. It said, however, that it believed the effort spread across other online platforms, indicating that there may have been additional targets as well.
Officials…