Tag Archive for: Widespread

US indicts Iranian over widespread hacking campaign


Iranian national Alireza Shafie Nasab has been charged by the U.S. for his involvement in the targeting of more than 200,000 devices in an attempt to hack U.S. government agencies, defense contractors, and private organizations for nearly five years, reports The Register.

U.S. organizations have been subjected to spear-phishing, software, and social engineering attacks by Nasab and his co-conspirators operating under the Mahak Rayan Afraz business between 2016 and April 2021, according to the Justice Department. While Nasab could face up to 47 years’ imprisonment for his charges, his location remains unknown, prompting the State Department to unveil a $10 million bounty for any information regarding his whereabouts. “Today’s charges highlight Iran’s corrupt cyber ecosystem, in which criminals are given free rein to target computer systems abroad and threaten U.S. sensitive information and critical infrastructure. Our National Security Cyber Section remains focused on disputing these cross-border hacking schemes and holding those responsible to account,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olsen.

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Ex-CMD of OAUTH accused in panel report of widespread job racketeering


A report by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare’s investigative panel exposed a dire situation at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital (OAUTH) in Ile-Ife, Osun State.

According to the PUNCH, the former Chief Medical Director, Dr. Olumuyiwa Owojuyigbe, was implicated in over-employment and job racketeering, causing the non-payment of salaries to health workers.

Dr. Aderemi Azeez, leading the investigation, discovered a significant over-employment situation orchestrated by Owojuyigbe. The hospital, against waiver approval for 450 vacancies in 2022 employment, hired a staggering 1,973 individuals. This substantial surplus resulted in financial strain, leaving several workers unpaid for months.

The Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Muhammad Pate, acknowledged the investigation’s conclusion.

“We are addressing the OAUTH situation. The investigation has just been completed into this unfortunate situation. We understand the difficulties being faced by numerous innocent health workers and will do our best to resolve them equitably,” the minister wrote on his verified X (Twitter) handle.

Read also:OAU health workers lament over 10 months unpaid salaries

In a statement titled ‘OAUTH Ife and the Unrest,’ and signed by Patricia Deworitshe, the Director of Press at the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the ministry addressed the unrest at OAUTH, pinning it on the job racketeering and over-employment orchestrated during Owojuyigbe’s tenure.

The statement partly read, “The hospital conducted the exercise in two phases (230 and 220) after securing the approval of the Federal Character Commission not to advertise the posts.

“During the first phase, the hospital recruited 600 instead of 230, and a total of 1,823 staff members were recruited in the second phase instead of 220.

“At the end of the two phases, the hospital recruited 2,423 staff instead of 450. As such, 1,973 staff members were recruited in excess of the approved waiver.”

The hospital’s recruitment process vastly exceeded approved limits, employing 2,423 instead of the authorised 450 staff, with an alarming…

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NZ websites down – Security update causes widespread internet outages


Banks and other local websites and apps have been inaccessible for some users this morning. Photo / File

An internet glitch rendered banking apps and a number of .co.nz websites inaccessible for some users this morning.

It appears to be related to an attempt by InternetNZ – the non-profit that administers local web domains – to rollout a better system for protecting users from fake versions of websites.

“Our apologies, we’re aware that certain Internet Service providers are encountering issues this morning. This means some of our customers will have issues accessing FastNet Classic and ASB mobile,” ASB posted this morning on its Facebook page.

And after Sheri Ngaha complained on Kiwibank’s Facebook page “Why can’t we get into the app or ring this morning. This is so annoying, I’m needing to transfer money but can’t,” the bank replied: “We’re currently experiencing an issue for some customers when trying to access our App or Internet Banking. Our teams are looking into this at the moment and we hope to have this resolved soon.”

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On Twitter, Hamish Mack posted: “NZ sites RNZ, New World shopping online and Kiwibank sites are not working? What the heck??”

And Rebecca McMillan said the outage did not seem to have affected Govt.nz but all NZ apps and websites she used were down.

“Can’t even listen to @radionz because the mobile app is down. Yikes. Time to get a transistor radio.”

A service bulletin from InternetNZ late yesterday noted technical problems that hit .ac.nz (education) addresses yesterday then spread to other local domains from 10.45pm last night. InternetNZ today said all times of local internet addresses were affected. An update at 9.21am this morning said, “The issue will resolve over time”.

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Responding to a Herald query on Twitter, cloud computing engineer Simon Lyall said, “InternetNZ was changing the key they use to sign .nz and made a mistake. So DNS [domain name server] queries are getting a certificate error.” In other words, it seems a change designed to boost security went haywire, rendering some sites inaccessible. It seems the change related to a measure to prevent…

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‘Spring4Shell’ bug in framework for Java programming draws widespread warnings


Written by Joe Warminsky

Security researchers are urging users of Spring — a popular framework for creating create web applications in the widely used Java programming language — to update their software due to a critical vulnerability discovered this week.

An alert Friday from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warns Spring users that a remote attacker “could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system,” otherwise known as remote code execution (RCE).

Researchers are already calling the bug Spring4Shell, a name reminiscent of the major Log4Shell bug discovered in December in the open source Log4j logging software for websites. Spring4Shell is also open source software, which can complicate the response to a major bug.

The CISA alert does not specify how widely Log4Shell might be exploited so far. Researchers at Rapid7 said in an updated blog post Friday that it is still “a quickly evolving incident.”

Engineers at Spring, part of IT giant VMware, announced the vulnerability Thursday, roughly two days after reports noted that its existence had been leaked outside of usual vulnerability disclosure processes. Spring posted a guide to mitigation on Thursday.

The potential for exploitation of Spring4Shell can vary from project to project, researchers say, given that not all programmers might be using the same version of the Spring platform.

“In certain configurations, exploitation of this issue is straightforward, as it only requires an attacker to send a crafted HTTP request to a vulnerable system,” researchers at Praetorian said. “However, exploitation of different configurations will require the attacker to do additional research to find payloads that will be effective.”

There are signs that Spring4Shell had drawn potentially malicious activity before this week. Researchers at 360 Netlab say they have evidence of activity as early as 10 days before Spring officially announced the bug. A familiar piece of malware subsequently has reared its head, 360 Netlab said. A variant of the Mirai malware

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