Tag Archive for: unprecedented

Russian government websites face ‘unprecedented’ wave of hacking attacks, ministry says

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“We are recording unprecedented attacks on the websites of government authorities,” the statement said. “If their capacity at peak times reached 500 GB earlier, it is now up to 1 TB. That is, two to three times more powerful than the most serious incidents of this type previously recorded.”

Wednesday evening, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry website was defaced by hackers, who altered its content. Notably, the hack replaced the department hotline with a number for Russian soldiers to call if they want to defect from the army — under the title “Come back from Ukraine alive.”

Top news items on the ministry’s front page were changed to “Don’t believe Russian media — they lie” and “Default in Russia is near,” along with a link offering “full information about the war in Ukraine.”

Also Wednesday, insults aimed at President Vladimir Putin and Russians over the situation in Ukraine were added to dozens of Russian judicial websites.

Under recent Russian laws against spreading “fake news about the military,” the use of the words “war” or “invasion” to describe what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation in Ukraine” is punishable with hefty fines and years in prison.

A few days after Russia began its attack on Ukraine, the state-run news agency Tass was hacked and defaced with an ad urging people to “take to the streets against the war.”

Russia’s main public services portal, Gosuslugi, had sustained more than 50 crippling denial-of-service attacks, the Russian Communications Ministry said on Feb. 26.

In early March, multiple other websites were hacked, including the Ministry of Culture, the Federal Penitentiary Service and the Internet regulator Roskomnadzor.

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Securing Taiwan Requires Immediate Unprecedented Cyber Action

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The prospect of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan echoes some of the most disastrous 20th century instances of great power expansion—reminiscent, perhaps, of Nazi Germany’s Anschluss or even its subsequent invasion of Poland. Given that the latter ignited World War II, America’s strategic community has been rightly fixated on the vast military and political contingencies of a Chinese invasion that would remake Asia. 

But Taiwan is not just the geopolitical fulcrum of the Indo-Pacific; it is also the nexus of a rapidly evolving Sino-American technological competition. And if 20th century great power competition is any guide, tech races are just as important to long-term competition as territorial military contests. The U.S. needs to act now to secure the technological dimensions of a looming Taiwan crisis, or risk losing far more than the island. 

In the domain of Sino-American tech rivalry, Taiwan is unique in two aspects: First, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) remains the world’s tightest bottleneck in the global high-tech ecosystem, with exclusive capabilities to construct the most valuable, sophisticated computer chips in existence. Second, military conflagration in Taiwan would represent a hitherto-unknown level of cyber-intensive military conflict, the seeds of which likely have already been planted. Both of these realities demand unprecedented cooperation between the United States and Taiwan—cooperation that requires significant trust and openness in Taipei and significant counter-espionage and national security assistance from Washington. 

The Silicon Brain Trust

It’s hard to overstate the importance of TSMC’s microscopic transistors: The company’s chips are the foundation of enormous sectors of national economic growth for both the U.S. and China. They are also the backbone of the massively consequential tech race between the two countries in security-essential sectors like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and advanced military capabilities. TSMC is estimated to have cornered as much as 90 percent market share of the world’s most advanced processors, and controls a majority of the global market for made-to-order chips. To…

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Bandwidth: We defeated ‘unprecedented’ ransomware hack in ‘running gun battle’

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RALEIGH – Hackers did indeed attack Raleigh-based communications provider Bandwidth seeking a ransom, but its CEO said the company didn’t pay and ultimately defeated what he called an “unprecedented” assault and “running gun battle.”

CEO David Morken briefed Wall Street Analysts in a conference call Monday after Bandwidth reported quartertly earnings and formally acknowledged losing as much as $12 million as a result of the September hack described as a DDOS, or distributed denial of service.

Bandwidth had denied to even acknowledge that the cyber attack was indeed ransomeware before Monday’s call.

“We did not pay a ransom and instead relied on innovative solutions and strategies to confront the threat, head on. To sum up, we believe, Bandwidth is now stronger than ever and we plan to leverage what we’ve learned to help make the ecosystem safer for enterprise communications,” he said.

Learning from the attack, Bandwidth has deployed additional safeguards – what he called prophylactic security” – against future hacks, he added.

Ransomware attacks, which have soared in recent years, have led to payoffs as much as $67 million plus inflict remediation cosots on average totalling more than $2 million.

Bandwidth projects bigger revenue loss from hack attack, stock drops

“It is a small price to pay right now as a prophylactic security to have that additional nominal step at the beginning of a user experience,” Morken explained.

Bandwidth is a global provider of communications services such as 911 access to a host of tech giants.

Bandwidth’s customers include Microsoft, Google, Zoom and many others that utilize internet-based services in Bandwidth’s product portfolio.

Morken also sought to assure analysts that the company, whose stock (Nasdaq: BAND) is down nearly 50% this year due in part to the attack, is regaining some customers who turned to other service providers in the VoIP [voice over internet protocol] marketplace for voice and data as Bandwidth suffered outages and service delays.

“Those conversations [with customers], unexpectedly have become extremely positive regarding Bandwidth being the most resilient and best place to…

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The 22 biggest tech scandals of 2020, from the unprecedented Twitter hack to the makers of ‘Fortnite’ declaring war on Apple

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JANUARY: New details emerge about Jeff Bezos’ iPhone hack

mohammad bin salman jeff bezos
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (left) and Jeff Bezos.

AP

In January, The Guardian and The New York Times reported that a forensic analysis of Bezos’ iPhone by FTI Consulting found evidence that Saudi officials were involved in the leaking of Bezos’ relationship and personal messages in 2019.

The claim was backed up soon after, when the UN called for an “immediate investigation” into the crown prince. 

According to the forensic report, Bezos and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman exchanged numbers at a dinner in April 2018 — on May 1 of that year, Bezos’ iPhone is said to have been infiltrated after he received a video attachment from the crown prince’s personal WhatsApp account.

Within hours of Bezos receiving the video, the report found that a “massive and … unprecedented exfiltration of data” began, an increase of more than 29,000%. 

After details of the forensic report were published, the Saudi government issued a statement calling the reporting “absurd” and said it would be investigating the claims. 

FEBRUARY: A former Microsoft engineer is convicted of stealing $10 million from the company

Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Stephen Brashear

Former Microsoft software engineer Volodymyr Kvashuk was convicted in February of stealing $10 million worth of digital currency from his former employer. 

Kvashuk — who worked at Microsoft from August 2016 to June 2018, first as a contractor, then as a full-time employee — was convicted by the US District Court in Seattle after a five-day trial, the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington announced at the time. 

The court found that Kvashuk had stolen “currency stored value,” like online gift cards, during his time testing the retail-sales platform on Microsoft’s website. He then resold the currency in exchange for bitcoin and used the money to buy a lakefront home for $1.6 million and a Tesla that cost $160,000 — likely a Model X, given the price. 

Kvashuk was later sentenced to nine years in prison. 

MARCH: Trolls start invading Zoom calls to share porn or racial slurs

video conference, video chat, zoom call
A Zoom call.

Getty Images

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