FBI | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday announced the shutdown of an illicit marketplace called Rydox ("rydox[.]ru" and "rydox[.]cc") for selling stolen personal information, access devices, and other tools for conducting cybercrime and fraud. In tandem, three Kosovo nationals and administrators of the service, Ardit Kutleshi, Jetmir Kutleshi, and Shpend Sokoli, have been arrested. Ardit Kutleshi and Jetmir Kutleshi are expected to be extradited to the U.S. Sokoli, who was apprehended on December 12, 2024, in Albania, will be charged and prosecuted in the nation. "The Rydox marketplace has conducted over 7,600 sales of personally identifiable information (PII), stolen access devices, and cybercrime tools, which generated at least $230,000 in revenue since its inception in or around February 2016," the DoJ said in a statement. This included credit card information and login credentials stolen from thousands of victims residing in the United S...

Five alleged members of the infamous Scattered Spider cybercrime crew have been indicted in the U.S. for targeting employees of companies across the country using social engineering techniques to harvest credentials and using them to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data and break into crypto accounts to steal digital assets worth millions of dollars. All of the accused parties have been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of conspiracy, and one count of aggravated identity theft. They include - Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, 23, aka AD, of College Station, Texas Noah Michael Urban, 20, aka Sosa and Elijah, of Palm Coast, Florida Evans Onyeaka Osiebo, 20, of Dallas, Texas Joel Martin Evans, 25, aka joeleoli, of Jacksonville, North Carolina; and Tyler Robert Buchanan, 22, aka tylerb, of the U.K. While the name Scattered Spider  is not directly referenced in the indictment document, it has been described as "a loosely organized financi...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has announced arrests and charges against several individuals and entities in connection with allegedly manipulating digital asset markets as part of a widespread fraud operation. The law enforcement action – codenamed Operation Token Mirrors – is the result of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) taking the "unprecedented step" of creating its own cryptocurrency token and company called NexFundAI . NexFundAI, as per information on the website, was marketed as redefining the "intersection between finance and artificial intelligence" and that its aim was to "create a cryptocurrency token that not only serves as a secure store of value but also acts as a catalyst for positive change in the world of AI." "Three market makers — ZM Quant, CLS Global, and MyTrade — along with their employees are charged with allegedly wash trading and/or conspiring to wash trade on behalf of NexFundAI, a cryptocurrency co...

Two men have been indicted in the U.S. for their alleged involvement in managing a dark web marketplace called WWH Club that specializes in the sale of sensitive personal and financial information. Alex Khodyrev, a 35-year-old Kazakhstan national, and Pavel Kublitskii, a 37-year-old Russian national, have been charged with conspiracy to commit access device fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Khodyrev and Kublitskii, between 2014 and 2024, acted as the main administrators of WWH Club (wwh-club[.]ws) and various other sister sites – wwh-club[.]net, center-club[.]pw, opencard[.]pw, skynetzone[.]org – that functioned as dark web marketplaces, forums, and training centers to enable cybercrime. The indictment follows an investigation launched by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in July 2020 after determining that WWH Club's primary domain (www-club[.]ws]) resolved to an IP address belonging to DigitalOcean, allowing them to issue a federal search warrant to t...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Monday announced the disruption of online infrastructure associated with a nascent ransomware group called Radar/Dispossessor. The effort saw the dismantling of three U.S. servers, three United Kingdom servers, 18 German servers, eight U.S.-based criminal domains, and one German-based criminal domain. Dispossessor is said to be led by individual(s) who go by the online moniker "Brain." "Since its inception in August 2023, Radar/Dispossessor has quickly developed into an internationally impactful ransomware group, targeting and attacking small-to-mid-sized businesses and organizations from the production, development, education, healthcare, financial services, and transportation sectors," the FBI said in a statement. As many as 43 companies have been identified as victims of Dispossessor attacks, including those located in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Honduras, India, Peru, Pol...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has disclosed that it's in possession of more than 7,000 decryption keys associated with the LockBit ransomware operation to help victims get their data back at no cost. "We are reaching out to known LockBit victims and encouraging anyone who suspects they were a victim to visit our Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov," FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran said in a keynote address at the 2024 Boston Conference on Cyber Security (BCCS). LockBit, which was once a prolific ransomware gang, has been linked to over 2,400 attacks globally, with no less than 1,800 impacting entities in the U.S. Earlier this February, an international law enforcement operation dubbed Cronos led by the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) dismantled its online infrastructure. Last month, a 31-year-old Russian national named Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev was outed by authorities as the group's administrator and developer, a ...

Law enforcement agencies have officially seized control of the notorious  BreachForums  platform, an online bazaar known for peddling stolen data, for the second time within a year. The website ("breachforums[.]st") has been replaced by a seizure banner stating the clearnet cybercrime forum is under the control of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  The operation is the result of a collaborative effort from authorities in Australia, Iceland, New Zealand, Switzerland, the U.K., the U.S., and Ukraine. The FBI has also taken control of the  Telegram channel  operated by Baphomet, who became the administrator of the forum following the  arrest  of his predecessor Conor Brian Fitzpatrick (aka  pompompurin ) in March last year. It's worth noting a prior iteration of BreachForums, hosted at breached.vc/.to/.co and managed by pompompurin, was seized by law enforcement in late June 2023. "This Telegram chat is under the control of ...

The North Korean threat actor tracked as Kimsuky has been observed deploying a previously undocumented Golang-based malware dubbed  Durian  as part of highly-targeted cyber attacks aimed at two South Korean cryptocurrency firms. "Durian boasts comprehensive backdoor functionality, enabling the execution of delivered commands, additional file downloads, and exfiltration of files," Kaspersky  said  in its APT trends report for Q1 2024. The attacks, which occurred in August and November 2023, entailed the use of legitimate software exclusive to South Korea as an infection pathway, although the precise mechanism used to manipulate the program is currently unclear. What's known is that the software establishes a connection to the attacker's server, leading to the retrieval of a malicious payload that kicks off the infection sequence. The first-stage serves as an installer for additional malware and a means to establish persistence on the host. It also paves the way f...

A former employee of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been sentenced to nearly 22 years (262 months) in prison for attempting to transfer classified documents to Russia. "This sentence should serve as a stark warning to all those entrusted with protecting national defense information that there are consequences to betraying that trust,"  said  FBI Director Christopher Wray. Jareh Sebastian Dalke, 32, of Colorado Springs was employed as an Information Systems Security Designer between June 6 to July 1, 2022, during which time he had access to sensitive information. Despite his short tenure at the intelligence agency, Dalke is said to have made contact with a person he thought was a Russian agent sometime between August and September of that year. In reality, the person was an undercover agent working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). To demonstrate his "legitimate access and willingness to share," he the...

The threat actors behind the LockBit ransomware operation have resurfaced on the dark web using new infrastructure, days after an international law enforcement exercise  seized control  of its servers. To that end, the notorious group has moved its data leak portal to a new .onion address on the TOR network, listing 12 new victims as of writing. The administrator behind LockBit, in a  lengthy follow-up message , said some of their websites were confiscated by most likely exploiting a critical PHP flaw tracked as CVE-2023-3824, acknowledging that they didn't update PHP due to "personal negligence and irresponsibility." "I realize that it may not have been this CVE, but something else like 0-day for PHP, but I can't be 100% sure, because the version installed on my servers was already known to have a known vulnerability, so this is most likely how the victims' admin and chat panel servers and the blog server were accessed," they noted. They also cla...

A Ukrainian national has pleaded guilty in the U.S. to his role in two different malware schemes, Zeus and IcedID, between May 2009 and February 2021. Vyacheslav Igorevich Penchukov (aka Vyacheslav Igoravich Andreev, father, and tank), 37, was  arrested  by Swiss authorities in October 2022 and extradited to the U.S. last year. He was added to the FBI's most-wanted list in 2012. The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)  described  Penchukov as a "leader of two prolific malware groups" that infected thousands of computers with malware, leading to ransomware and the theft of millions of dollars. This included the Zeus banking trojan that facilitated the theft of bank account information, passwords, personal identification numbers, and other details necessary to login to online banking accounts. Penchukov and his co-conspirators, as part of the "wide-ranging racketeering enterprise" dubbed Jabber Zeus gang, then masqueraded as employees of the victims to initiate ...

The U.S. government on Thursday said it disrupted a botnet comprising hundreds of small office and home office (SOHO) routers in the country that was put to use by the Russia-linked APT28 actor to conceal its malicious activities. "These crimes included vast spear-phishing and similar credential harvesting campaigns against targets of intelligence interest to the Russian government, such as U.S. and foreign governments and military, security, and corporate organizations," the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)  said  in a statement. APT28 , also tracked under the monikers BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Fighting Ursa, Forest Blizzard (formerly Strontium), FROZENLAKE, Iron Twilight, Pawn Storm, Sednit, Sofacy, and TA422, is  assessed  to be linked to Unit 26165 of Russia's Main Directorate of the General Staff (GRU). It's known to be active since at least 2007. Court documents allege that the attackers pulled off their cyber espionage campaigns by relying on  MooBot , a...

A former software engineer with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been sentenced to 40 years in prison by the Southern District of New York (SDNY) for transmitting classified documents to WikiLeaks and for possessing child pornographic material. Joshua Adam Schulte, 35, was originally charged in June 2018. He was  found guilty  in July 2022. On September 13, 2023, he was  convicted  on charges of receiving, possessing, and transporting child pornography. In addition to the prison term, Schulte has been sentenced to a lifetime of supervised release. "Schulte's theft is the largest data breach in the history of the CIA, and his transmission of that stolen information to WikiLeaks is one of the largest unauthorized disclosures of classified information in the history of the U.S.," the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)  said . The sensitive information shared by Schulte included a tranche of  hacking tools and exploits  that were denominat...

The U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) has officially  announced  the disruption of the BlackCat ransomware operation and released a decryption tool that more than 500 affected victims can use to regain access to files locked by the malware. Court documents show that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) enlisted the help of a confidential human source (CHS) to act as an affiliate for the BlackCat group and gain access to a web panel used for managing the gang's victims, in what's a case of hacking the hackers. The confiscation effort involved collaboration and assistance from multiple law enforcement agencies from the U.S., Germany, Denmark, Australia, the U.K., Spain, Switzerland, and Austria. BlackCat , also called ALPHV, GOLD BLAZER, and Noberus,  first emerged  in December 2021 and has since gone on to be the second most prolific ransomware-as-a-service variant in the world after LockBit. It's also the first Rust-language-based ransomware strain spotted ...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning of a new trend of dual ransomware attacks targeting the same victims, at least since July 2023. "During these attacks, cyber threat actors deployed two different ransomware variants against victim companies from the following variants: AvosLocker, Diamond, Hive, Karakurt, LockBit, Quantum, and Royal," the FBI  said  in an alert. "Variants were deployed in various combinations." Not much is known about the scale of such attacks, although it's believed that they happen in close proximity to one another, ranging from anywhere between 48 hours to within 10 days. Another notable change observed in ransomware attacks is the increased use of custom data theft, wiper tools, and malware to exert pressure on victims to pay up. "This use of dual ransomware variants resulted in a combination of data encryption, exfiltration, and financial losses from ransom payments," the agency said. "Second ran...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning that Barracuda Networks Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances patched against a recently disclosed critical flaw continue to be at risk of potential compromise from suspected Chinese hacking groups. It also  deemed  the fixes as "ineffective" and that it "continues to observe active intrusions and considers all affected Barracuda ESG appliances to be compromised and vulnerable to this exploit." Tracked as  CVE-2023-2868  (CVSS score: 9.8), the zero-day bug is said to have been weaponized as early as October 2022, more than seven months before the security hole was plugged. Google-owned Mandiant is tracking the China-nexus activity cluster under the name  UNC4841 . The remote command injection vulnerability, impacting versions 5.1.3.001 through 9.2.0.006, allows for unauthorized execution of system commands with administrator privileges on the ESG product. In the attacks observed so far, a successf...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning about cyber crooks masquerading as legitimate non-fungible token (NFT) developers to steal cryptocurrency and other digital assets from unsuspecting users. In these fraudulent schemes, criminals either obtain direct access to NFT developer social media accounts or create look-alike accounts to promote "exclusive" new NFT releases, often employing misleading advertising campaigns that create a sense of urgency to pull them off. "Links provided in these announcements are phishing links directing victims to a spoofed website that appears to be a legitimate extension of a particular NFT project," the FBI  said  in an advisory last week. The replica websites urge potential targets to connect their cryptocurrency wallets and purchase the NFT, only for the threat actors to siphon the funds and NFTs to wallets under their control. "Contents stolen from victims' wallets are often processed through a ser...