Tag Archive for: Wars

Emotet Resurfacing as Power Player in Ransomware Wars, Avertium Warns

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Avertium, a Top 250 MSSP, releases report that dives deep into the notorious Emotet botnet and warns of its criminal intent.

by D. Howard Kass • Sep 14, 2022

Avertium, a Top 250 MSSP, has released a new threat intelligence report that takes a deep dive on the notorious Emotet botnet and warns organizations of its criminal capabilities.

Emotet has a history of disappearing and re-emerging, most notably going underground following a surgical takedown in eight countries that dismantled the world’s most dangerous malware operation in January 2021. International law enforcement, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), gained control of Emotet’s infrastructure. This effort involved hundreds of servers located globally by taking it down from the inside and redirecting the infected machines of victims to a law enforcement environment.

Emotet has been linked to many destructive ransomware infections and associated with TrickBot, Dridex, QakBot, Conti/Ryuk, BitPaymer and REvil-associated attacks. The malware, first discovered as a banking trojan in 2014, evolved over time to become the kingpin platform for cyber hijackers.

Emotet was sold as a service to smaller operatives and criminal groups as an access key to compromised systems vulnerable to data theft and ransomware extortion. Following the law enforcement action, the syndicate disappeared for the next 10 months, but beginning in Q1 2022 reappeared with new tactics and targets.

A Deeper Dive Into Emotet

Here’s what’s new with Emotet:

  • In March 2022 during U.S. tax season, Emotet was pretending to be the IRS and sent fake tax forms and bogus federal tax returns to victims.
  • By July 2022 researchers were reporting Emotet as the top malware threat.
  • Cyber researcher AdvIntel observed a total of 1,267,598 Emotet infections worldwide so far this year. Activity from Emotet peaked between February and March 2022, kicking off during the start of the Russian-Ukraine conflict. On August 8, 2022, AdvIntel confirmed that two education entities in Kansas City were infected with the botnet. Additionally, on August 12,…

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The Undeclared War’s creator on showing cyberwarfare on TV

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Writer/director Peter Kosminsky is no stranger to British television. From his start in the late 1980s working on documentaries to writing and directing recent projects such as Wolf Hall and The State, Kosminsky has covered topics as diverse as the Falklands War, British ISIS agents in Syria, and Thomas Cromwell’s clash with King Henry VIII in the 16th century.

His latest project, the six-episode Peacock series The Undeclared War, tackles a new subject: cyberwarfare and Russian aggression during the 2024 British general election. While set in the near future, the show deals with topical themes that are both realistic and sobering. In an interview with Digital Trends, Kosminsky talks about casting such notable actors as Star Trek’s Simon Pegg and Oscar-winning actor Mark Rylance and the urgency to fictionalize a very real threat to democracy around the world.

Digital Trends: What was the genesis behind the creation of The Undeclared War?

Peter Kosminsky: Well, like a lot of people, I watched some “bad actors” trying to undermine the U.S. presidential election in 2016. I found that really frightening. What do we have if we don’t have the integrity of our election system? I mean, look at what happened to the last U.S. presidential election, the sort of poisonous impact that’s having on political life in the United States. As far as I can tell from a distance, if people lose trust in their elections, it’s serious.

Absolutely.

So that’s where I started. You know, I thought, Ok, what’s going on here in England? And the more I dug into it, the more terrifying it became. Actually, I didn’t even know that there was a fourth domain of conflict called cyber. I knew about land, sea and air, and that was it, really. I discovered that there was a hot war going on in the cyber domain. They were firing cyber weapons at each other [Britain and Russia]. And it was, by its nature, escalatory. When I started to look at the Russian concept of information operations, they see cyber as just one aspect of it.

The cast of The Undeclared War populate on computer screens for the series poster.

I realized that there was a concrete strategy at play to try to create chaos in our society, in the West, to try to undermine people’s trust in our institutions, in our…

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WION Global Summit 2022: Now, wars are being fought in cyberspace, says Supa Mandiwanzira

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Supa Mandiwanzira, former minister of ICT & cyber security, Zimbabwe, speaking at the WION Global Summit said “in the world of the internet somebody sitting in London can announce the election results, you can’t control it”.

 

“The process of making laws is very bureaucratic, it can never be ahead of technology,” Zimbabwe’s former minister of ICT & cyber security said during the session on digital warfare.

Also Read: WION Global Summit 2022: Cyber war is a new war, says Barakat Alkindi

“The reality is that the politicians are understanding the risks when it comes to their power. Cyber security is right at the bottom of the list.”

“For as long we weaponise the internet, the fear is we will go back to an age where nobody cares. You cannot allow a few countries to invest and run the technology,” Mandiwanzira asserted.

Watch | WION Global Summit 2022: Is Ukraine caught in a frozen conflict?

“Wars have always been fought on land, air, sea and space. Now, wars are being fought in cyberspace, you are in a sense legitimising cyber attacks,” he added.

WATCH WION LIVE HERE

 

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New Army Chief underlines need for ‘indigenous weapons’ to fight conventional wars

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By Ajit K Dubey The Russia-Ukraine war has taught India to be prepared to fight conventional wars besides building capacity using indigenous weapon systems, said Army chief General Manoj Pande on Sunday soon after taking over his assignment.

In an exclusive with ANI after assuming the office of the Chief of Army Staff, Gen Pande said, “The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has taught the Indian Army that it should be prepared to fight conventional wars too and that capacity should be built using indigenous weapon systems. The ongoing conflict has brought out that the conventional wars are there to stay and we need to continue to focus on our capability development to fight a conventional war.” Citing the use of modern technology in the over two-month-long conflict between the two countries, the Army Chief stressed on the continuation of India’s focus on capability development to fight a conventional war.

“In over two months-long conflict going on between Russia and Ukraine, we have seen the use of artillery guns, tanks, air defence guns and anti-tank guided missiles drones and counter-drone systems. What we need to derive from it is that we need to continue to focus on capability development to fight a conventional war… We need to rely on our indigenous weapon systems and equipment & develop that capacity,” the Army Chief said. Talking about the dimensions of war in the modern era exposed by the Russia-Ukraine war, Gen Pande said that it has brought to the fore the “importance of non-kinetic means of warfare, such as information and cyber warfare”.

“To that extent, we are aligned with self-reliance and Make In India initiatives. We need to build our capabilities as we prepare ourselves for future conflict,” the Army Chief added. (ANI)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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