Tag Archive for: ministry

Phishing attacks on central ministry officials get sharper, targeted

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In the course of a recent phishing attack, several employees of various central ministries received mysterious emails including one from a government domain email address (nic.in) claiming an “internal hand” in General Bipin Rawat’s death. This is part of phishing attempts against central government officials through some compromised government domain email IDs (gov.in and nic.in), which are increasingly getting more targeted and sophisticated, The Indian Express has learnt.

The National Informatics Centre (NIC) runs the official email service, handing out email accounts to departments, ministries and public sector units of the central and state governments.

This latest round of cyber attempts was launched earlier this month following the deaths of Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and 11 others in the crash of an Indian Air Force helicopter near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on December 8. Group Captain Varun Singh who was also aboard the helicopter succumbed to his injuries on December 15.

The phishing email with the subject, “Internal report: Gen Bipin Rawat’s incident-inside job”, reviewed by the Express, was sent to employees of a ministry department through a malicious email ID with the domain name nic.in. It asks the recipients to click a phishing link that claimed to be an internal report.

Another cyber attack bid was made through a compromised gov.in email ID targeting the central government employees in October soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s September visit to the United States. This email, also reviewed by the Express, was sent with the subject, “Viral Video PM Narendra Modi slapped in USA Visit”, attempting to lure the recipients into clicking a link to view the so-called video. Soon afterwards, the NIC unit of the ministry concerned issued a security alert, telling the users not to open and click on the phishing emails from at least five such compromised email IDs.

Sources within the NIC and the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) confirmed that the breaches in the servers were “discovered” last year, but insisted that it had now been “fixed”, and that the “situation…

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Hackers Exploit Log4j Flaw at Belgian Defense Ministry

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The Belgian Defense Ministry detected a cyberattack last week and isolated the parts of its network that were affected.



Photo:

Hatim Kaghat/Belga News Agency/Zuma Press

Belgium’s Defense Ministry said it shut down parts of its computer network because attackers triggered the vulnerability in the Log4j software that was disclosed earlier this month.

A spokesman told Belgian broadcaster VRT on Monday that the Defense Ministry detected the cyberattack last Thursday and isolated the parts of its network that were affected. “All weekend our teams have been mobilized to control the problem, continue our activities and warn our partners,” the spokesman said.

A Defense Ministry spokesman didn’t respond to a request for additional information.

The flaw in the widely used Log4j software was disclosed on Dec. 9, prompting a global race for companies to issue security patches to fix the problem. U.S. officials said hundreds of millions of devices are at risk. The Biden administration ordered federal agencies to identify internet-connected software that uses Log4j and immediately update those tools, bolster their security or take them offline.

A spokeswoman for Belgium’s Centre for Cyber Security said the agency is aware of the attack on the Defense Ministry but declined to comment. Last Thursday, Kevin Holvoet, a cyber threat intelligence analyst at the cybersecurity agency, said he had seen no…

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Ministry of Defence PAYS hackers to search computer systems for vulnerabilities

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Ministry of Defence PAYS hackers to search computer systems for vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by real cybercriminals

  • MoD announces the conclusion of its first bug bounty challenge with HackerOne
  • Bug bounties offer ethical hackers financial reward for reporting technical flaws
  • Members of the public can earn thousands of pounds for reporting a single flaw

By Jonathan Chadwick For Mailonline

Published: | Updated:

Hackers have been paid by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to search their computer systems for vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by real criminals online.

The government department has successfully concluded its first bug bounty programme, conducted in partnership with US firm HackerOne. 

The programme recruited 26 ‘ethical hackers’ who went under the bonnet of its networks for 30 days, in a bid to get ahead of ‘bad actors’ and improve national security.

California-based HackerOne acts as a middleman by connecting businesses with its community of ethical hackers who have been through criminal background checks. 

Neither HackerOne nor the MoD would reveal how much each hacker is getting paid as part of the programme.  

However, another organisation already partnered with HackerOne recently handed out $50,000 (more than £36,000) for discovering a severe vulnerability.

While this is an attractive sum, it’s a mere drop in the pond considering how much money a single flaw can cost businesses if it’s noticed by cyber criminals first. 

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Bug bounty programs offer 'ethical hackers' a financial reward in exchange for reporting technical flaws that could cost organisations millions

 Bug bounty programs offer ‘ethical hackers’ a financial reward in exchange for reporting technical flaws that could cost organisations millions 

BUG BOUNTIES  

A bug bounty is a reward that is paid out to developers who find critical flaws in software. 

The bounty can be monetary reward, or being put into a ‘hall of fame’ list for finding the bounty, or gear from the company giving the bounty, or any combination thereof. 

With open-source software, anyone in the world is free to comb through the code of an application and look for flaws. 

Source: OSTIF 

The average bounty paid for critical vulnerabilities is much also even…

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Four Chinese Nationals Working With the Ministry of State Security Charged With Global Computer Intrusion Campaign – Homeland Security Today

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A federal grand jury in San Diego, California, returned an indictment in May charging four nationals and residents of the People’s Republic of China with a campaign to hack into the computer systems of dozens of victim companies, universities, and government entities in the United States and abroad between 2011 and 2018. The indictment, which was unsealed on Friday, alleges that much of the conspiracy’s theft was focused on information that was of significant economic benefit to China’s companies and commercial sectors, including information that would allow the circumvention of lengthy and resource-intensive research and development processes. The defendants and their Hainan State Security Department (HSSD) conspirators sought to obfuscate the Chinese government’s role in such theft by establishing a front company, Hainan Xiandun Technology Development Co., Ltd. (海南仙盾) (Hainan Xiandun), since disbanded, to operate out of Haikou, Hainan Province.

The two-count indictment alleges that Ding Xiaoyang (丁晓阳), Cheng Qingmin (程庆民) and Zhu Yunmin (朱允敏), were HSSD officers responsible for coordinating, facilitating and managing computer hackers and linguists at Hainan Xiandun and other MSS front companies to conduct hacking for the benefit of China and its state-owned and sponsored instrumentalities. The indictment alleges that Wu Shurong (吴淑荣) was a computer hacker who, as part of his job duties at Hainan Xiandun, created malware, hacked into computer systems operated by foreign governments, companies and universities, and supervised other Hainan Xiandun hackers.

The conspiracy’s hacking campaign targeted victims in the United States, Austria, Cambodia, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Targeted industries included, among others, aviation, defense, education, government, health care, biopharmaceutical and maritime. Stolen trade secrets and confidential business information included, among other things, sensitive technologies used for submersibles and autonomous vehicles, specialty chemical formulas, commercial aircraft servicing, proprietary genetic-sequencing technology…

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