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France Ties Russia's Sandworm to a Multiyear Hacking Spree https://www.wired.com/story/sandworm-centreon-russia-hack/ THE RUSSIAN MILITARY hackers known as Sandworm, responsible for everything from blackouts in Ukraine to NotPetya, the most destructive malware in history, don't have a reputation for discretion. But a French security agency now warns that hackers with tools and techniques it links to Sandworm have stealthily hacked targets in that country by exploiting an IT monitoring tool called Centreon—and appear to have gotten away with it undetected for as long as three years. On Monday, the French information security agency ANSSI published an advisory warning that hackers with links to Sandworm, a group within Russia's GRU military intelligence agency, had breached several French organizations. The agency describes those victims as "mostly" IT firms and particularly web hosting companies. Remarkably, ANSSI says the intrusion campaign dates back to late 2017 and continued until 2020. "Even though there's no known endgame linked to this campaign documented by the French authorities, the fact that it's taking place is concerning, because the end goal of most Sandworm operations is to cause some noticeable disruptive effect. We should be paying attention." ANSSI didn't identify the victims of the hacking campaign. But a page of Centreon's website lists customers including telecom providers Orange and OptiComm, IT consulting firm CGI, defense and aerospace firm Thales, steel and mining firm ArcelorMittal, Airbus, Air France KLM, logistics firm Kuehne + Nagel, nuclear power firm EDF, and the French Department of Justice. It's unclear which if any of those customers had servers running Centreon exposed to the internet. If this sounds a lot like SolarWinds we agree. Russian hackers hack SolarWinds and Centreon to get inside their clients enterprises, and have! Police officers in Beverly Hills have been playing music while being filmed, seemingly in an effort to trigger Instagram’s copyright filters. https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvxb94/is-this-beverly-hills-cop-playing-sublimes-santeria-to-avoid-being-livestreamed "I believe Sergeant Fair aka BILLY FAIR is using copyrighted music to keep me from being able to play these videos on social media. Then tells me in the second video he couldn’t hear be earlier in the day and also couldn’t hear me then, all while playing music. He isn’t alone. I have video of this happening with another officer who played music as I was talking. Is this an order from the top? Wait till I show you more. Until then I’ll be filing a complaint on this officer Fair and officer Reyes who had done it before to me. It’s outrageous." Instagram in particular has been increasingly strict on posting copyrighted material. Any video that contains music, even if it’s playing in the background, is potentially subject to removal by Instagram. Most people complain about these rules. Beverly Hills law enforcement, however, seems to be a fan. Based on what’s visible in the video, Fair seems to be banking on Instagram’s copyright algorithm detecting the music, and either ending the live stream outright or muting it. Or, even if the algorithm does not detect the song immediately, someone — for example, a disgruntled police officer—could simply wait until a user posts an archive of the live video on their page, then file a complaint with Instagram that it contains copyrighted material. And then the whole thing gets taken down. Update, apparently the best group to use if you don't want recordings of you on Instagram are the Beatles as they have the most zealous copyright police! 270 Deposit addresses are responsible for 55% of all cryptocurrency money laundering https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/cryptocurrency-money-laundering-2021 Money laundering is the key to cryptocurrency-based crime. The primary goals of cybercriminals who steal cryptocurrency, or accept it as payment for illicit goods, are to obfuscate the source of their funds and convert their cryptocurrency into cash so that it can be spent or kept in a bank. Of course, thanks to the efforts of law enforcement and compliance professionals around the world, cybercriminals can’t simply send their ill-gotten cryptocurrency to an exchange and cash out as a normal user would. Instead, they rely on a surprisingly small group of service providers to liquidate their crypto assets. Some of these providers specialize in money laundering services while others are simply large cryptocurrency services and money services businesses (MSBs) with lax compliance programs. Investigators could significantly damage cybercriminals’ ability to convert cryptocurrency into cash by going after these money laundering service providers, thereby reducing the incentives for cybercriminals to use cryptocurrency in the first place. Overall, what the data makes clear is that most illicit funds travel to service deposit addresses for whom money laundering makes up a huge portion of their activity, to the point that many of them appear to have no other purpose. Many SolarWinds Customers have still Failed to Secure their Systems Following the Hack https://www.securityweek.com/many-solarwinds-customers-failed-secure-systems-following-hack Many companies still expose SolarWinds Orion to the internet and have failed to take action following the disclosure of the massive SolarWinds breach, according to RiskRecon, a Mastercard company that specializes in risk assessment. RiskRecon on Friday said it observed 1,785 organizations exposing Orion to the internet on December 13, 2020, shortly after the breach came to light, and the number dropped to 1,330 by February 1, 2021. However, only 8% of these companies have applied the Orion update (2020.2.4) released by SolarWinds in response to the breach. Even more concerning is that 4% of the companies that expose Orion still use a version containing the Sunburst code. Moreover, roughly one-third of these organizations still haven’t patched the vulnerability exploited by Supernova. An article published by the New York Times in January said some intelligence officials had concluded that “more than a thousand Russian software engineers” were most likely involved in the attack. Some cybersecurity professionals questioned the claims at the time. However, Brad Smith, president and legal chief at Microsoft, reiterated the belief over the weekend in an interview on the CBS program 60 Minutes. “When we analyzed everything that we saw at Microsoft, we asked ourselves how many engineers have probably worked on these attacks. And the answer we came to was, well, certainly more than 1,000,” Smith said, adding that Microsoft tasked 500 engineers with investigating the attack. Smith also said the attackers had written roughly 4,000 lines of code that were then delivered to customers of SolarWinds’ Orion product. “I think from a software engineering perspective, it's probably fair to say that this is the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen,” Smith said. Drones With Facial Recognition Are Primed To Fly https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/02/15/drones-with-facial-recognition-are-primed-to-fly-but-the-world-isnt-ready-yet/ https://pdfaiw.uspto.gov/.aiw?PageNum=1&docid=20210034843&IDKey=9F055AB1185B&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fappft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO1%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526d%3DPG01%2526p%3D1%2526u%3D%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html%2526r%3D1%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526s1%3D20210034843.PGNR.%2526OS%3D%2526RS%3D A patent application, published earlier this month, was filed by Tel Aviv-based AnyVision back in August 2019 in the U.S., detailing tech to help a drone find the best angles for a facial recognition shot, before trying to find a match for the target by referring to faces stored in a database. The patent aims to iron out some of the complexities of identifying faces from a flying machine. Various obvious issues arise when trying to recognize someone from a drone: acquiring an angle at which a face can be properly captured and being able to get good-quality visuals whilst moving or hovering. Both are considerably harder than getting a match from static footage. AnyVision CEO Avi Golan pointed to delivery drones as potentially requiring facial recognition to determine whether they’re reached the correct buyer. Amazon has already patented similar tech, pointing to its potential plans for its experimental drone delivery fleet. Microsoft bought a stake in the startup during a $74 million round in 2019, but last year pulled out after reports that AnyVision’s tool had been used at Israel-West Bank border crossings. Pretty much anywhere you go in public now your face is being captured by cameras that are clearly capable of running facial recognition software. ICO whacks a Nottingham call center for ringing 160 thousand people. https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/mpns/2619281/call-centre-ops-limited-mpn.pdf Call Centre Ops of Nottingham England, made 159,461 direct marketing calls to Telephone Preference Service (the UK's Do not call registry)of registered users between May and October 2019, and a number of complaints were subsequently were sent to the ICO. The company told the watchdog that it used data provided by third-party lead generation suppliers. The ICO said there was no evidence the business had made checks to ensure adequacy of consent to call TPS users in the database. The fine of £120,000 ( one hundred and twenty thousand pounds) sees a 20% discount if paid in full by March 11th 2021. Leave a Reply. |
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