Tag Archive for: israeli

City of Oakland, Irish and Israeli universities suffer ransomware attacks

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The city of Oakland, California, has fallen victim to a ransomware attack, forcing the city to shut down its systems.

The City said in a statement that the attack has not impacted critical services such as 911 dispatch, fire and emergency resources, which continue to operate normally.

The City’s Information Technology Department (ITD) is working in coordination with law enforcement to investigate the attack and restore impacted services. The City says it has initiated a plan to respond to the attack based on industry best practices.

The public has been informed that there may be delays.

“We are actively monitoring the situation and sending updated information as it becomes available,” the statement reads.

The identity of the gang behind the attack is yet to be determined. The City has not yet disclosed any information about ransom demands or data theft from the compromised systems.

Oakland reporter Jaime Omar Yassin was the first to break the news on Twitter last week.

Last year, Yassin reported that the City’s IT department was understaffed and vulnerable to ransomware attacks.

Munster Technological University data leak

Munster Technological University (MTU) in Cork, Ireland confirmed on Sunday that the data stolen in a recent cyberattack is now available on the dark web.

The university said in a statement that its technical advisers and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has informed it that specific data was accessed and copied from MTU systems during the ransomware attack and now made available on the dark web.

The NCSC has been assisting the MTU since the incident.

While the institution said it was not feasible to fully determine the exact nature of all data, including personal data affected or the identities of all people impacted by this leak, it has started informing those possibly affected.

MTU is also advising people to be wary of possible phishing attacks, providing advice on how to protect themselves from them.

The university claims it has taken precautions to safeguard its students and employees by deploying all of its resources in the investigation of the attack, with support of professional forensic experts and the NCSC.

In addition, the MTU has secured an…

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Another Israeli Exploit Developer Caught Selling Malware To Blacklisted Countries

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from the quite-the-cottage-industry-you-got-there dept

Maybe it’s time for the Israeli government to put a moratorium on Mossad-based startups. Israeli intelligence services have been the petri dishes for a particular strain of techbro — ones who have the smarts to create zero-click exploits but none of the common sense needed to cull baddies from their customer lists.

The Israeli government is partly to blame. It worked closely with NSO Group (and presumably others in the same business) to broker deals with human rights abusers: diplomacy via malware sales.

Months of negative press got NSO blacklisted by the US government. It also got it investigated in its homeland, finally resulting in the Israeli government (reluctantly) limiting who the company could sell to.

NSO isn’t the only malware merchant with Israeli roots. Candiru — another recipient of US sanctions — calls Israel home. So does Cytrox, yet another exploit developer with ties to Israeli intelligence services. Cytrox was at the center of a recent domestic spying scandal in Greece, with its malware being used to target opposition leaders and journalists. This culminated in Greek police forces raiding Cytrox’s local office, presumably as part of the ongoing investigation.

Now there’s another Israeli spyware maker making the wrong kind of headlines, as Fanny Potkin and Poppy McPherson report for Reuters.

Israel’s Cognyte Software Ltd won a tender to sell intercept spyware to a Myanmar state-backed telecommunications firm a month before the Asian nation’s February 2021 military coup, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

No matter who’s running the Myanmar government, they shouldn’t be trusted with powerful spyware. For most of the past 60 years, the country has been run by some form of military dictatorship. The 2021 coup simply reshuffled a bit of the military dictatorship organizational chart. Throughout this time period, residents (especially Muslim residents) have been on the receiving end of intense oppression. For Myanmar’s Muslims, oppression means death: ethic cleansing.

Given the fact that any malware sold to the Myanmar government was likely to be abused to target critics…

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Israeli official’s housekeeper sentenced over spying for Iran-linked hackers

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Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s housekeeper was sentenced to three years in prison for spying for an Iran-linked hacker group, as well as offering to download harmful malware onto his computer, Israeli prosecutors say.

Omri Goren Gorochovsky, 38, and his partner worked as cleaners at the home despite previous criminal convictions. Gorochovsky reached out to the Iran-linked hacker group, known as Black Shadow, through Telegram after hearing about a previous cyberattack on several Israeli websites, an indictment seen by Business Insider claims. The housekeeper sent the group distinguishing pictures of Gantz’s residence as proof he worked there before offering to further spy for them and upload spyware to the defense minister’s computer through a USB drive in exchange for $7,000, according to the filing.

ISRAEL SAYS ‘HIGH PROBABILITY’ ITS FORCES KILLED AL JEEZERA JOURNALIST UNINTENTIONALLY

Gorochovsky, who accepted a plea deal to avoid espionage charges that carry a sentence of 10-15 years, maintained his innocence.

“[Gorochovsky] is not a spy, and this isn’t a spying scandal,” attorneys Gal Wolf and Anat Yaari, Gorochovsky’s defenders, said, according to the Times of Israel. “This is about a man who found himself entangled in debt and identified a security breach.”

In his initial interrogation, Gorochovsky said he intended to trick the Iranian hackers.

“If they would have waited a few days before arresting me, they’d see that I’m not a spy. I wanted to trick the Iranians and take their money without sending them any photo or documents,” he said in his interrogation, according to Channel 12.

Later, however, he admitted to the accusations against him but denied knowing of the hackers’ ties to Iran.

“Who says it was the Iranians? It was hackers on Telegram,” he said in a court appearance.

Gorochovsky’s arrest last November sent shock waves through Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, with questions arising as to how the housekeeper, who started working for Gantz before he entered politics, made it through the vetting…

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Israeli Spyware Maker NSO Has 22 Customers in 12 EU Countries. And It’s Not Alone – Tech News

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