Group-IB | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A Russian-speaking ransomware group dubbed OldGremlin has been attributed to 16 malicious campaigns aimed at entities operating in the transcontinental Eurasian nation over the course of two and a half years. "The group's victims include companies in sectors such as logistics, industry, insurance, retail, real estate, software development, and banking," Group-IB  said  in an exhaustive report shared with The Hacker News. "In 2020, the group even targeted an arms manufacturer." In what's a rarity in the ransomware landscape, OldGremlin (aka TinyScouts) is one of the very few financially motivated cybercrime gangs that primarily focuses on Russian companies. Other notable groups consist of Dharma, Crylock, and Thanos, contributing to an uptick in ransomware attacks targeting businesses in the country by over 200% in 2021. OldGremlin first came to light in September 2020 when the Singapore-headquartered cybersecurity company  disclosed  nine campaigns orch

The threat actor behind the attacks on  Twilio  and  Cloudflare  earlier this month has been linked to a broader phishing campaign aimed at 136 organizations that resulted in a cumulative compromise of 9,931 accounts. The activity has been condemned  0ktapus  by Group-IB because the initial goal of the attacks was to "obtain Okta identity credentials and two-factor authentication (2FA) codes from users of the targeted organizations." Calling the attacks well designed and executed, the Singapore-headquartered company said the adversary singled out employees of companies that are customers of identity services provider Okta. The modus operandi involved sending targets text messages containing links to phishing sites that impersonated the Okta authentication page of the respective targeted entities. "This case is of interest because despite using low-skill methods it was able to compromise a large number of well-known organizations," Group-IB  said . "Furthe

For years, securing a company's systems was synonymous with securing its "perimeter." There was what was safe "inside" and the unsafe outside world. We built sturdy firewalls and deployed sophisticated detection systems, confident that keeping the barbarians outside the walls kept our data and systems safe. The problem is that we no longer operate within the confines of physical on-prem installations and controlled networks. Data and applications now reside in distributed cloud environments and data centers, accessed by users and devices connecting from anywhere on the planet. The walls have crumbled, and the perimeter has dissolved, opening the door to a new battlefield: identity . Identity is at the center of what the industry has praised as the new gold standard of enterprise security: "zero trust." In this paradigm, explicit trust becomes mandatory for any interactions between systems, and no implicit trust shall subsist. Every access request, regardless of its origin,

Russian authorities on Wednesday  arrested  and detained Ilya Sachkov , the founder of cybersecurity firm Group-IB, for two months in Moscow on charges of state treason following a search of its office on September 28. The Russian company, which is headquartered in Singapore, confirmed the development but noted the "reason for the search was not yet clear,"  adding  "The decentralized infrastructure of Group-IB allows us to keep our customer's data safe, maintain business operations and work without interruption across our offices in Russia and around the world." Group IB said the raids at its Moscow office had commenced on Tuesday, with law enforcement authorities leaving that same evening. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the government was aware of the arrest but that it had no additional details about the case, Russian state news agency TASS  reported . The cybersecurity company  relocated  to Singapore in late 2018 as part of its attempts to distan

The Russian Interior Ministry announced on Monday the arrest of 20 individuals from a major cybercriminal gang that had stolen nearly $900,000 from bank accounts after infecting over one million Android smartphones with a mobile Trojan called "CronBot." Russian Interior Ministry representative Rina Wolf said the arrests were part of a joint effort with Russian IT security firm Group-IB that assisted the massive investigation. The collaboration resulted in the arrest of 16 members of the Cron group in November 2016, while the last active members were apprehended in April 2017, all living in the Russian regions of Ivanovo, Moscow, Rostov, Chelyabinsk, and Yaroslavl and the Republic of Mari El. Targeted Over 1 Million Phones — How They Did It? Group-IB first learned of the Cron malware gang in March 2015, when the criminal gang was distributing the Cron Bot malware disguised as Viber and Google Play apps. The Cron malware gang abused the popularity of SMS-banking

Russian Group of Hackers reportedly cracked into the Kazan-based Energobank and messed up with the Ruble-Dollar exchange rates. In Feb 2015, a hacking group, known by the name METEL , successfully breached into the Russian Regional Bank for just 14 minutes and caused the exchange rate to fluctuate between 55 and 66 rubles per dollar, which finally resulted in the increment of Ruble's value. Here's how they did it: According to Russian security firm, Group-IB, who investigated the incident, the Metel Hacking group infected Kazan-based Energobank with a virus known as the Corkow Trojan and placed more than $500 million in orders at non-market rates. " This is the first documented attack using this virus, and it has the potential to do much more damage ," Dmitry Volkov, the head of Group-IB's cyber intelligence department, told Bloomberg . The hackers had taken the advantage of Spear Phishing Technique, which appears to come from a legit source. A single click

In October, we had reported that the creator of the infamous Blackhole  exploit kit was  arrested in Russia  and now the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has also confirmed that ' Paunch ', the mastermind behind infamous  BlackHole  exploit kit, along with Gang of 12 other criminals were arrested on October 4, 2013 in Russia. Russian security firm Group-IB has disclosed that it has assisted the police in the investigation of Paunch, who was residing in the city of Togliatti . 27-years old ' Paunch ' is the author of the notorious BlackHole and Cool exploit kits that are today popular among cybercriminals and costs $500 to $700 a month in for buyers. Cool and Blackhole exploit kits are the ready-made hacking tools for easily serving malware from compromised sites, in result to install malware on users' computers using exploits of zero-day vulnerabilities in latest web browsers. The general damage caused by the criminal gang is estimated around US $2.1

The capillary diffusion of mobile devices, the lack of security systems on these platforms and low level of awareness on principal cyber threats made them a privileged target for cybercrime. We have assisted in the recent year to an explosion of malware designed to hit principal mobile OSs, in a recent report Sophos security firm revealed that in Australia and the U.S. Android threat exposure rates exceeding those of PCs showing the urgency to implement proper countermeasures. The situation appears really critical that why I asked to the expert of Group-IB Forensics Lab to show me how these agents work with a really case study. Several month ago Group-IB Forensics Lab detected mobile-banking malware through Google Play by Sberbank request (Russian leading national bank).  The File associated to the malware was named sber.apk , it was an Android Package having size of 225,905 bytes and digest md5: F27D43DFEEDFFAC2EC7E4A069B3C9516 . Analyzing the functionality of the ag