Tag Archive for: white

White House plans 30-country meeting on cyber crime and ransomware -official

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By Trevor Hunnicutt and Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top U.S. national security advisers will gather officials from 30 countries this month with plans to combat the growing threat of ransomware and other cyber crime, President Joe Biden said on Friday.

An online session hosted by the White House National Security Council will also be aimed at “improving law enforcement collaboration” on issues like “the illicit use of cryptocurrency,” Biden said in a statement.

The Biden administration has elevated the response to cybersercurity to the senior-most levels of the administration following a set of attacks this year that threatened to destabilize U.S. energy and food supplies.

The meat producer JBS SA paid https://www.reuters.com/technology/jbs-paid-11-mln-response-ransomware-attack-2021-06-09 $11 million to end an attack on its systems that halted production and was believed to have originated from a criminal group with Russian links.

Colonial Pipeline paid a hacker gang believed to be based in Eastern Europe nearly $5 million https://www.reuters.com/business/colonial-pipeline-ceo-tells-senate-cyber-defenses-were-compromised-ahead-hack-2021-06-08/#:~:text=NEW%20YORK%2C%20June%208%20(Reuters,by%20stealing%20a%20single%20password to regain access, some of which was later clawed back by U.S. law enforcement.

Both companies paid the ransoms in bitcoin.

Ransom software works by encrypting victims’ data. Typically hackers will offer the victim a key in return for cryptocurrency payments that can run into hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

The Biden administration hopes that their new informal group, which they’re calling the Counter-Ransomware Initiative, will bolster their diplomatic push that has included direct talks with Russia as well as the NATO alliance and Group of Seven (G7) wealthy nations.

The administration has increasingly focused on blocking https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-allies-accuse-china-global-cyber-hacking-campaign-2021-07-19 what it calls China’s “malicious cyber activity,” charges which Beijing has denied.

It was not immediately clear which countries would participate or when exactly the meeting would take place.

One White…

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Ransomware strike targets US agriculture industry, White House quietly hits back

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The White House meets with Big Tech companies amid cyberattacks on U.S. companies. FOX Business’ Ed Lawrence with more.

An industry marked as “off limits” to Russian hackers by President Biden was hit in a ransomware attack earlier this week when the operations of two farming co-ops in Iowa and Minnesota were disrupted.

In a June meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden warned the Kremlin that cyberattacks against 16 U.S. industries – including agriculture – would not be tolerated.

The president said it was an effort to establish a “cybersecurity arrangement” and restore “order” after the largest U.S. fuel pipeline and a major meatpacking company were shut down by ransomware schemes.

$5.9M RANSOMWARE ATTACK ON MAJOR AGRICULTURE GROUP POSES RISK TO US GRAIN, PORK, CHICKEN SUPPLY

On Sunday, Minnesota-based farm supply and grain marketing cooperative Crystal Valley was hit by a ransomware attack that “infected the computer system” and “severely interrupted the daily operations of the company,” the group said in a statement.

The co-op did not answer Fox News questions about the ransom amount or who is suspected behind the latest attack.

But the following day reports surfaced showing another attack was levied at Iowa-based farming co-op, NEW Cooperative, by hackers demanding a $5.9 million cryptocurrency payout in exchange for renewed access to its food supply chains.

NEW Cooperative did not respond to a Fox News request for an interview. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Russian cybercrime group BlackMatter is believed to be behind the attack.

In a screen shot by Dark Feed, the group appeared to mock NEW Cooperative by suggesting they did not fall under “critical” infrastructure outlined by Biden.

The farming group warned the cybercrime group in an online chat that they attacked the agricultural industry and could face severe consequences from the U.S. government, Recorded Future shared in a tweet.

Despite reports that BlackMatter was negotiating with the Iowa co-op, a National Security Council (NSC) spokesperson told Fox News that the U.S. government has not formally attributed the attacks to a specific group.

“That being said, we are bringing the full weight…

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Is White House Crackdown on Ransomware Having Any Effect?

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The latest edition of the ISMG Security Report features an analysis of the state of the Biden administration’s efforts to disrupt ransomware attackers.

In this report, you’ll hear (click on player beneath image to listen):

  • ISMG’s Scott Ferguson detail White House efforts to combat ransomware via geopolitical and law enforcement means, as well as by boosting the cyber resiliency of the U.S. private sector and government agencies;


  • ISMG’s Jeremy Kirk cover/detail/analyze an emergency patch from Apple, which fixes a zero-click integer overflow vulnerability in iMessage that was being exploited by Pegasus spyware;


  • Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Gould, who heads Britain’s National Police Chiefs’ Council’s cybercrime program, detail essentials for planning and executing a cybersecurity incident response plan.


The ISMG Security Report appears on this and other ISMG websites on Fridays. Don’t miss the Sept. 3 and Sept. 10 editions, which respectively discuss the latest data breach trends and ransomware attackers’ ideal targets.

Theme music for the ISMG Security Report is by Ithaca Audio under a Creative Commons license.

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Become A White Hat Hacker With This Expert-Led Training Package

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With the dominance of the internet and computer technologies, fields of work that never existed in the past have grown to astronomical size and importance. And it’s possible to lose big from this kind of development if you’re working in a more traditional field. But from an optimistic perspective, it’s possible to benefit greatly and make a lot of money working the kind of job that 10 years ago would have been completely irrelevant to the general population. One of those jobs is, surprisingly enough, hacking.

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