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Network-attached storage (NAS) appliance maker QNAP on Tuesday released a new advisory warning of a cryptocurrency mining malware targeting its devices, urging customers to take preventive steps with immediate effect. "A bitcoin miner has been reported to target QNAP NAS. Once a NAS is infected, CPU usage becomes unusually high where a process named '[oom_reaper]' could occupy around 50% of the total CPU usage," the Taiwanese company  said  in an alert. "This process mimics a kernel process but its [process identifier] is usually greater than 1000." QNAP said it's currently investigating the infections, but did not share more information on the initial access vector that's being used to compromise the NAS devices. Affected users can remove the malware by restarting the appliances. In the interim, the company is recommending that users update their QTS (and QuTS Hero) operating systems to the latest version, enforce strong passwords for administr

The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on Russian cryptocurrency exchange Suex for helping facilitate and launder transactions from at least eight ransomware variants as part of the government's efforts to crack down on a surge in ransomware incidents and make it difficult for bad actors to profit from such attacks using digital currencies. "Virtual currency exchanges such as SUEX are critical to the profitability of ransomware attacks, which help fund additional cybercriminal activity," the department  said  in a press release. "Analysis of known SUEX transactions shows that over 40% of SUEX's known transaction history is associated with illicit actors. SUEX is being designated pursuant to  Executive Order 13694 , as amended, for providing material support to the threat posed by criminal ransomware actors." According to blockchain analytics firm  Chainalysis , SUEX is legally registered in the Czech Republic and operates out of office

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

Hackers have siphoned $611 million worth of cryptocurrencies from a blockchain-based financial network in what's believed to be one of the largest heists targeting the digital asset industry, putting it ahead of breaches targeting exchanges Coincheck and Mt. Gox in recent years. Poly Network, a China-based cross-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) platform for swapping tokens across multiple blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, on Tuesday  disclosed  unidentified actors had exploited a vulnerability in its system to plunder thousands of digital tokens such as Ether. "The hacker exploited a vulnerability between contract calls," Poly Network said.  The stolen Binance Chain, Ethereum, and Polygon assets are said to have been transferred to three different wallets, with the company urging miners of affected blockchain and centralized crypto exchanges to blocklist tokens coming from the addresses. The three wallet addresses are as follows -  Ethereum: 0xC8a65Fadf

Among the problems stemming from our systemic failure with cybersecurity, which ranges from decades-old software-development practices to Chinese and Russian cyber-attacks, one problem gets far less attention than it should—the insider threat. But the reality is that most organizations should be at least as worried about user management as they are about Bond villain-type hackers launching compromises from abroad. Most organizations have deployed single sign-on and modern identity-management solutions. These generally allow easy on-boarding, user management, and off-boarding. However, on mobile devices, these solutions have been less effective. Examples include mobile applications such as WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, or even SMS-which are common in the workforce. All of these tools allow for low-friction, agile communication in an increasingly mobile business environment. Today, many of these tools offer end-to-end encryption (e2ee), which is a boon when viewed through the lens of

A U.K. citizen has been arrested in the Spanish town of Estepona over his alleged involvement in the July 2020 hack of Twitter, resulting in the compromise of 130 high-profile accounts. Joseph O'Connor , 22, has been  charged  with intentionally accessing a computer without authorization and obtaining information from a protected computer, as well as for making extortive communications. The Spanish National Police made the arrest pursuant to a U.S. warrant. Besides his role in the Twitter hack, O'Connor is also charged with computer intrusions related to takeovers of TikTok and Snapchat user accounts and cyberstalking an unnamed juvenile victim. The  great Twitter hack  of July 15, 2020, emerged as one of the biggest security lapses in the social media platform's history after O'Connor, along with  Mason Sheppard, Nima Fazeli, and Graham Ivan Clark , managed to gain access to Twitter's internal tools, abusing it to breach the accounts of politicians, celebritie

In a major blow, the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday said it has recovered 63.7 bitcoins (currently valued at $2.3 million) paid by Colonial Pipeline to the DarkSide ransomware extortionists on May 8, pursuant to a seizure warrant that was authorized by the Northern District of California. The  ransomware attack  also hobbled the pipeline company's fuel supply, prompting the government to issue an  emergency declaration , even as the company shelled out a ransom amount of approximately  75 bitcoins  ($4.4 million as of May 8) to regain access to its systems. A week after the highly publicized incident, the ransomware-as-a-service syndicate disbanded with a May 14 farewell message to affiliates, stating that its internet servers and cryptocurrency stash were  seized  by unknown law enforcement entities. While DarkSide's announcement was perceived as an exit scam, the latest move from DoJ confirms earlier speculations of law enforcement involvement. Stating that "

Just as Colonial Pipeline  restored  all of its systems to operational status in the wake of a crippling ransomware incident a week ago, DarkSide, the cybercrime syndicate behind the attack, claimed it lost control of its infrastructure, citing a law enforcement seizure. All the dark web sites operated by the gang, including its DarkSide Leaks blog, ransom collection site, and breach data content delivery network (CDN) servers, have gone dark and remain inaccessible as of writing. In addition, the funds from their cryptocurrency wallets were allegedly exfiltrated to an unknown account, according to a note passed by DarkSide operators to its affiliates. "At the moment, these servers cannot be accessed via SSH, and the hosting panels have been blocked," the  announcement  obtained by Intel 471 read. The development comes as DarkSide closed its Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) affiliate program for good "due to the pressure from the U.S.", with the group stating th

Cybercriminals successfully plundered another digital cryptocurrency exchange. European cryptocurrency exchange Eterbase this week disclosed a massive breach of its network by an unknown group of hackers who stole cryptocurrencies worth 5.4 million dollars. Eterbase, which has now entered maintenance mode until the security issue is resolved, described itself as Europe's Premier Digital Asset Exchange. Based in Bratislava, Slovakia, and launched in 2019, Eterbase is a small cryptocurrency exchange platform that focuses on crypto to SEPA integration (via individual IBAN accounts), multi-asset support, and regulatory compliance. On Monday night, malicious threat actors managed to raid six Eterbase's hot wallets for Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Tezos, Algorand, and TRON and transferred the funds into their wallets managed at six rival crypto exchanges, Eterbase reported on its Telegram channel on Tuesday. According to a tweet posted by the affected exchange, Eterbase t

As suspected, the KYC details of thousands of Binance's customers that hackers obtained and leaked online earlier this month came from the company's third-party vendor, Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange Binance confirmed. For those unaware, Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, hit by a " Potential KYC leak " earlier this month, with an unknown hacker distributing the Know Your Customer (KYC) images of hundreds of its users online and to media outlets. Before leaking the KYC images online, the alleged hacker threatened the exchange to release KYC data of its 10,000 customers if the company did not pay 300 Bitcoins—equivalent to over $3 million at today's exchange value. While Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao called the incident a fud (fear, uncertainty, doubt), the exchange recently confirmed that some of the leaked images match actual accounts though others show evidence of manipulation. According to an official blog post , t

Are you using Komodo's Agama Wallet to store your KMD and BTC cryptocurrencies? Were your funds also unauthorisedly transferred overnight to a new address? If yes, don't worry, it's probably safe, and if you are lucky, you will get your funds back. Here's what exactly happened… Komodo, a cryptocurrency project and developer of Agama wallet, adopted a surprisingly unique way to protect its customers' funds. The company hacked its customers and unauthorisedly transferred nearly 8 million KMD and 96 Bitcoins from their cryptocurrency wallets to a new address owned by the company. Why? To secure funds of its customers from hackers. This may sound weird, but it's true. Komodo recently learned about a malicious open source, third-party JavaScript library that the company was using in its Agama Wallet app. The library, named "electron-native-notify," two months ago received a update from its anonymous author who included a secret backdoo

Though once synonymous with underground networks and black hat hackers, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gone mainstream over the past two years. In 2017, we saw the skyrocket of bitcoin to an all-time high of close to $20,000 followed by a significant decline the following year. But beyond the ups and downs in the market for the world's largest cryptocurrency is a much more sinister story revolving around cyber-attacks of the economy's newest asset class. In 2018, it estimated that as much as $1.7 billion worth of cryptocurrencies were swindled away from investors (likely more) through a variety of means. Whether accomplished through hacking, phishing, or other forms of scamming, it's clear that the crypto industry is facing a serious dilemma with security. For a technological movement based on decentralization and the advantages it offers for security, the number of breaches occurring is startling. Cryptocurrencies offer users a way to send money with

Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, confirmed today that the company lost nearly $41 million in Bitcoin in what appears to be its largest hack to date. In a statement, Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao said the company discovered a "large scale security breach" earlier on May 7, as a result of which hackers were able to steal roughly 7000 bitcoins, which worth 40.6 million at the time of writing. News of the hack comes just hours after Zhao tweeted that Binance has "to perform some unscheduled server maintenance that will impact deposits and withdrawals for a couple of hours." According to the company, malicious attackers used a variety of attack techniques, including phishing and computer viruses, to carry out the intrusion and were able to breach a single BTC hot wallet (a cryptocurrency wallet that's connected to the Internet), which contained about 2% of the company's total BTC holdings, and withdraw stolen Bitcoins

QuadrigaCX, the largest bitcoin exchange in Canada, has claimed to have lost CAD 190 million (nearly USD 145 million) worth of cryptocurrency after the exchange lost access to its cold (offline) storage wallets. Reason? Unfortunately, the only person with access to the company's offline wallet, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange, is dead. Following the sudden death of Gerry Cotten , founder and chief executive officer QuadrigaCX, the Canadian exchange this week filed for legal protection from creditors in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court until it locates and secures access to the lost funds. In a sworn affidavit filed by Cotten's widow Jennifer Robertson and obtained by Coindesk , Robertson said QuadrigaCX owes its customers some CAD 260 million (USD 198 Million) in both cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Ethereum, as well as fiat money. However, Robertson said the cryptocurrency exchange only has smaller amount in a 'hot wallet' (U

Late last week an unknown hacker or a group of hackers successfully targeted a cryptocurrency exchange with an aim to steal Bitcoins by compromising the web analytics service it was using. ESET malware researcher Matthieu Faou this weekend spotted malicious JavaScript code on up to 700,000 websites that were bundled with the traffic tracking code from the leading web analytics platform StatCounter . However, after analyzing the code, the researchers found that hackers managed to compromise StatCounter and successfully replaced its tracking script with malicious JavaScript code primarily designed to target customers of the Gate.io cryptocurrency exchange. Like Google Analytics, StatCounter is also an old, but popular real-time web analytics platform reportedly being used by more than two million websites and generates stats on over 10 billion page views per month. Here's How Hackers Tried to Steal Bitcoins from Crypto Exchange Though the malicious code was also inject

The Bitcoin Core development team has released an important update to patch a major DDoS vulnerability in its underlying software that could have been fatal to the Bitcoin Network, which is usually known as the most hack-proof and secure blockchain. The DDoS vulnerability, identified as CVE-2018-17144, has been found in the Bitcoin Core wallet software, which could potentially be exploited by anyone capable of mining BTC to crash Bitcoin Core nodes running software versions 0.14.0 to 0.16.2. In other words, Bitcoin miners could have brought down the entire blockchain either by overflooding the block with duplicate transactions, resulting in blockage of transaction confirmation from other people or by flooding the nodes of the Bitcoin P2P network and over-utilizing the bandwidth. The vulnerability had been around since March last year, but the team says nobody noticed the bug or nobody was willing to incur the expense of exploiting it. According to the bitcoin core developers

Ransomware has become a multimillion-dollar black market business for cybercriminals, and SamSam being a great example. New research revealed that the SamSam ransomware had extorted nearly $6 million from its victims since December 2015, when the cyber gang behind the ransomware started distributing the malware in the wild. Researchers at Sophos have tracked Bitcoin addresses owned by the attackers mentioned on ransom notes of each SamSam version and found the attackers have received more than $5.9 million from just 233 victims, and their profits are still on the rise, netting around $300,000 per month. "In total, we have now identified 157 unique addresses which have received ransom payments as well as 89 addresses which have been used on ransom notes and sample files but, to date, have not received payments," the new report by Sophos reads. SamSam Ransomware Attacks > What makes SamSam stand out from other forms of ransomware is that SamSam is not distributed

Almost three years after the arrest of two young Dutch brothers, who pleaded guilty to their involvement in creating and distributing CoinVault ransomware malware , a district court in Rotterdam today sentenced them to 240 hours of community service. In 2015, the two suspects — Melvin (25-year-old) and Dennis van den B. (21-year-old) — were arrested from Amersfoort on suspicion of involvement in CoinVault ransomware attacks. The duo was arrested by law enforcement with the help of researchers from Kaspersky Labs , who reverse-engineered the malware and found the full name of one of the suspects and their IP address left accidentally on the command and control server. CoinVault ransomware campaign that began in May 2014 was one of the most successful file-encrypting ransomware program of its time that encrypted over 14,000 Windows computers worldwide, primarily the Netherlands, the US, the UK, Germany, and France. Just like other ransomware attacks, the sole intent of CoinVau

Bitmessage developers have warned of a critical 'remotely executable' zero-day vulnerability in the PyBitmessage application that was being exploited in the wild. Bitmessage is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communications protocol used to send encrypted messages to users. Since it is decentralized and trustless communications, one need-not inherently trust any entities like root certificate authorities. Those who unaware, PyBitmessage is the official client for Bitmessage messaging service. According to Bitmessage developers, a critical zero-day remote code execution vulnerability, described as a message encoding flaw, affects PyBitmessage version 0.6.2 for Linux, Mac, and Windows and has been exploited against some of their users. "The exploit is triggered by a malicious message if you are the recipient (including joined chans). The attacker ran an automated script but also opened, or tried to open, a remote reverse shell," Bitmessage core developer Peter Šurda ex

Pavel Lerner , a prominent Russian blockchain expert and known managing director of one of the major crypto-exchanges EXMO, has allegedly been kidnapped by "unknown" criminals in the Ukranian capital of Kiev. According to Ukraine-based web publication Strana , Lerner, 40-year-old citizen of Russia, was kidnapped on December 26 when he was leaving his office in the center of town (located on the Stepan Bandera Avenue). Unknown kidnappers in dark clothes and balaclavas dragged Lerner in their black Mercedes-Benz Vito brand (state number AA 2063 MT) car and drove away in an unknown direction. The information comes from an anonymous source in Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, though multiple investigations are currently underway to find out why and by whom Lerner was kidnapped. Lerner is a recognized IT specialist in Ukraine who led a number of startups related to blockchain technology development and mining operations. Lerner is also the managing director of EXMO

Bitcoin is breaking every record—after gaining 20% jump last week, Bitcoin price just crossed the $14,800 mark in less than 24 hours—and there can be no better reason for hackers to put all of their efforts to steal skyrocketing cryptocurrency. NiceHash, the largest Bitcoin mining marketplace, has been hacked, which resulted in the theft of more than 4,700 Bitcoins worth over $57 million (at the time of breach). And guess what? You'll be surprised to know that the stolen BTC now worth over $70 million—in less than 24 hours. Founded in 2014, NiceHash is a cloud-based crypto-mining marketplace that connects people from all over the world to rent out their spare computing power to other in order to create new coins. On Wednesday, several NiceHash users reported that their BTC wallets had been emptied, which was later confirmed by NiceHash after its service went offline claiming to be undergoing maintenance. At the time of writing, the NiceHash service is still offline wi