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The same group of hackers that caused the power outage across several regions in Ukraine last Christmas holidays might have once again shut down power supply in northern Ukraine during the weekend. According to Ukrainian energy provider Ukrenergo, a cyber attack on Kyiv's power grid may have caused the power outages in the country on Saturday, December 17, near midnight. The blackout affected the northern part of Kiev, the country's capital, and surrounding areas, Ukrenergo Director Vsevolod Kovalchuk explained in a post on Facebook. Shortly after the incident, Ukrenergo engineers switched to manual mode and started restoring power in approximately 30 minutes in an effort to deal with the cyber attack. Power was fully restored after just an hour and fifteen minutes of the blackout. According to Kovalchuk, the one responsible for the weekend outage could be an "external interference through data network," however, the company's cybersecurity experts a

The biggest advertising fraud ever! A group of hackers is making between $3 Million to $5 Million per day from United States brands and media companies in the biggest digital ad fraud ever discovered. Online fraud-prevention firm White Ops uncovered this new Ad fraud campaign, dubbed " Methbot ," that automatically generates more than 300 Million fraudulent video ad impressions every day. The cyber criminal gang, dubbed AFT13, has developed Methbot robo-browser that spoofs all the necessary interactions needed to initiate, carry out and complete the ad transactions. The hackers, allegedly based in Russia, registered more than 6,000 domains and 250,267 distinct URLs impersonating brand and names of high-profile websites like ESPN, Vogue, CBS Sports, Fox News and the Huffington Post, and selling fake video ad slots. Cyber criminals behind Methbot are using servers hosted in Texas and Amsterdam to power more than 570,000 bots with forged IP addresses, mostly belong

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,

In his final month in office, President Barack Obama has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct a "full review" of pre-election cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations that many believe affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The United States intelligence agencies have attributed those series of cyber-attacks to Russia that shook the US election season. "The President earlier this week instructed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of the pattern of malicious cyber activity related to our presidential election cycle," White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters. At an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, White House's counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco announced that the president had "directed the Intelligence Community to conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process." President is expecting a full report before the end of his term, and Pres

The Russian government has introduced a draft bill that proposes prison sentences as punishment for hackers and cyber criminals creating malicious software used in targeting critical Russian infrastructure, even if they have no part in actual cyber attacks. The bill, published on the Russian government's website on Wednesday, proposes amendments to the Russian Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code with a new article titled, "Illegal influence upon the critical informational infrastructure of the Russian Federation." The article introduces punishment for many malicious acts, including the "creation and distribution of programs or information, which can be used for the destruction, blocking or copying data from the Russian systems." When suspects found as part of any hacking operation, they will face a fine between 500,000 and 1 Million rubles (about $7,700 to $15,400) and up to five years in prison, even if the hacking causes little or no harm. Also R

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have risen enormously in past few months and, mostly, they are coming from hacked and insecure internet-connected devices, most commonly known as Internet of Things (IoT). Recent DDoS attack against DNS provider Dyn that brought down a large chunk of the Internet came from hacked and vulnerable IoT devices such as DVRs, security cameras, and smart home appliances. This DDoS was the biggest cyber attack the world has ever seen. Now, in the latest incident, at least five Russian banks have been subject to a swathe of DDoS attacks for two days, said the Russian banking regulator. The state-owned Sberbank was one of the five targets of the attacks that began on last Tuesday afternoon and lasted over the next two days. According to Kaspersky Lab, the longest attack last for 12 hours and peaked at 660,000 requests per second came from a botnet of at least 24,000 hacked devices located in 30 countries. Although the culprit appears

Microsoft was very upset with Google last week when its Threat Analysis Group publically disclosed a critical Windows kernel vulnerability (CVE-2016-7255) that had yet to be patched. The company criticized Google's move , claiming that the disclosure of the vulnerability, which was being exploited in the wild, put its customers "at potential risk." The vulnerability affects all Windows versions from Windows Vista through current versions of Windows 10, and Microsoft was set to issue a fix come this month's Patch Tuesday. So, as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday, Microsoft today patched the security flaw in Windows that was actively being exploited by hackers. According to Microsoft's security bulletin released today, any hacker who tricked victims into running a "specially-crafted application" could successfully exploit the system bug and gain the ability to "install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with fu

Google's Threat Analysis Group publically disclosed on Monday a critical zero-day vulnerability in most versions of Windows just 10 days after privately disclosed both zero days to Microsoft and Adobe. While Adobe rushed an emergency patch for its Flash Player software on October 26, Microsoft had yet to release a fix. Microsoft criticized Google's move, saying that the public disclosure of the vulnerability — which is being exploited in the wild — before the company had time to prepare a fix, puts Windows users at "potential risk." The result? Windows Vista through current versions of Windows 10 is still vulnerable , and now everybody knows about the critical vulnerability. Now, Microsoft said that the company would be releasing a patch for the zero-day flaw on 8th November, as part of its regular round of monthly security updates. Russian Hackers are actively exploiting critical Windows kernel bug Microsoft acknowledged the vulnerability in a blog

The alleged Russian hacker, who was arrested by the FBI in collaboration with the Czech police, was believed to be the one responsible for massive 2012 data breach at LinkedIn, according to a statement released by LinkedIn. Now, United States authorities have officially indicted Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin , 29-years-old Russian national, for hacking not just LinkedIn , but also the online cloud storage platform Dropbox, and now-defunct social-networking company Formspring. Nikulin was arrested in Prague [ Watch Video ] on October 5 by the Czech police after Interpol issued an international arrest warrant. According to an indictment unsealed Friday, Nikulin had hacked three Bay Area technology companies in the spring and summer of 2012, which includes LinkedIn Corp, Dropbox, and Formspring. Nikulin gained access to LinkedIn's network between March 3 and March 4, 2012; Dropbox's network between May 14 and July 25, 2012; and Formspring between June 13 and June 2

The alleged Russian hacker arrested by the FBI in collaboration with the Czech police is none other than the hacker who was allegedly responsible for massive 2012 data breach at LinkedIn , which affected nearly 117 Million user accounts. Yevgeniy N , 29-year-old Russian hacker was arrested in Prague on October 5 suspected of participating in conducting cyber-attacks against the United States, according to Reuters . Earlier it was suspected that the hacker could be involved in hacking against the  Democratic National Committee  (DNC), or its presidential candidate Hillary Clinton , intended to influence the presidential election. However, the latest statement released by LinkedIn suggests that the arrest was related to a 2012 data breach at the social network that exposed emails and hashed password of nearly 117 Million users. "We are thankful for the hard work and dedication of the FBI in its efforts to locate and capture the parties believed to be responsible for this

UPDATE — It Turns out that the Russian Hacker arrested by the FBI is responsible for 2012 LinkedIn Data Breach. ( Read latest update here ) Czech police, in cooperation with the FBI, has arrested a Russian citizen in Prague suspected of participating in conducting cyber-attacks against the United States. Czech police announced the arrest on its official website Tuesday evening, without giving any further details about the man and for what he is wanted for. Yevgeniy N , 29-year-old, alleged Russian Hacker, was arrested after Interpol issued a warrant. Police detained the individual at a hotel in the city's center 12 hours after receiving the order. Officials say he was living in the country with his girlfriend and enjoying a lavish lifestyle, driving expensive cars. Neither the Czech police nor the FBI has issued any details on the charges that led to the arrest of the suspect. "Czech police carried out a successful joint operation with the US Federal Bureau of

Another data breach from 2012, and this time, it's Russia's biggest internet portal and email provider Rambler.ru . Rambler.ru , also known as Russia's Yahoo, suffered a massive data breach in 2012 in which an unknown hacker or a group of hackers managed to steal nearly 100 Million user accounts, including their unencrypted plaintext passwords. The copy of the hacked database obtained by the breach notification website LeakedSource contained details of 98,167,935 Rambler.ru users that were originally stolen on 17 February 2012, but went unreported. The leaked user records in the database included usernames, email addresses, ICQ numbers (IM chat service), social account details, passwords and some internal data, the data breach indexing site said in a blog post . The data breach was reported by the same hacker using the daykalif@xmpp.jp Jabber ID who handed LeakedSource over 43.5 Million user records from another 2012 hack suffered by the Last.fm music streaming se

The son of a prominent Russian lawmaker has been found guilty in the United States of running a hacking scheme that stole and sold 2.9 million US credit card numbers using Point-of-Sale (POS) malware, costing financial institutions more than $169 Million. Roman Seleznev , 32, the son of Russian Parliament member Valery Seleznev, was arrested in 2014 while attempting to board a flight in the Maldives, which sparked an international dispute between American and Russian authorities, who characterized the extradition as a " kidnapping ." Prosecutors introduced evidence from a corrupted laptop seized by the authorities at the time of his arrest.  "I don't know of any case that has allowed such outrageous behavior," said his lawyer, John Henry Browne. Also Read: How to Freeze Credit Report To Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft . According to the Department of Justice, Seleznev, who also went by the moniker ' Track2 ' online, was convicted in

The hacker, who recently claimed responsibility for the high-profile hack of Democratic National Committee (DNC), has now taken credit for hacking into the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) as well. To prove his claims, the hacker, going by the moniker Guccifer 2.0, dumped on Friday night a massive amount of personal information belonging to nearly 200 Democratic House members onto his blog . The notorious hacker published several documents that include cell phone numbers, home addresses, official and personal e-mail addresses, names of staffers, and other personal information for the entire roster of Democratic representatives. The data dump also includes several memos from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's personal computer, detailing fundraisers and campaign overviews. "As you see the US presidential elections are becoming a farce, a big political performance where the voters are far from playing the leading role," the hacker wrote in a

There's a lot more to come from the DNC Hack. The Associated Press confirmed yesterday that the computer systems used by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign were hacked as part of the recent Democratic National Convention (DNC) hack. Last week's email dump containing almost 20,000 emails from top DNC officials was just the beginning, which led DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign as the group's leader, as WikiLeaks announced that it was part one of its new Hillary Leaks series. This suggests WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange has had his hands on more data from the DNC hack that, according to him, could eventually result in the arrest of Hillary Clinton. Assange — Wikileaks' Next Leak will lead to Arrest of Hillary Clinton In an interview with Robert Preston of ITV last month, Assange made it clear that he hopes to harm Hillary Clinton's chances from becoming president of the United States, opposing her candidacy on both policies as well

On Friday, just three days prior to the start of the party's national convention, WikiLeaks released almost 20,000 e-mails with more than 8,000 stolen from the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) following a cyber attack in June. Two days later, on Sunday, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation and now had no major role on the party's convention stage. Many of the leaked emails indicted that the top DNC officials were actively working against the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders and strongly favoring Hillary Clinton over Sanders during the primaries, when they were supposed to be neutral. The controversy ruined the start of the DNC's national convention in Philadelphia and forced the Wasserman Schultz to resign. The leak, from January 2015 to May 2016, is believed to be an attempt by the Russian government to influence the presidential election, some U.S. lawmakers and cybersecurity experts say. The leak features DNC staffers debat

Russian authorities have arrested a gang of 50 hackers suspected of stealing more than 1.7 Billion Rubles ( over US$25 Million ) from banks and other financial institutions in the country since 2011. The same criminal gang had tried to steal a further 2.273 Billion Roubles by issuing false payment instructions, but that were blocked. The group allegedly used a Trojan called " Lurk " to set up a network of bots on infected computers to carry out the attacks, according to Russia's FSB ( Federal Security Service ). Initially identified in 2012, Lurk is a "fileless" Trojan that runs in RAM and has mostly been used for collecting banking credentials, especially for banks in Eastern Europe and the Russian Federation. The criminal gang allegedly seeded some of Russia's most popular websites with Lurk. Once infected, the malware downloaded more software modules, allowing the hackers to gain remote access to victims' computers. The hackers then stole

A massive database of 272 million emails and passwords for popular email services, including Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo, are being offered for sale on the Dark Web for less than $1, media reports. An anonymous Russian hacker, who goes by the moniker " the Collector ," was first spotted by cybersecurity firm Hold Security advertising 1.17 Billion user records for email accounts on a dark web forum. The stolen credentials apparently came from some of the world's biggest email providers, including Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft and Russia's Mail.ru. When security analysts at Hold Security reached out to the hacker and began negotiating for the dataset to verify the authenticity of those records, the hacker only asked for 50 Rubles (less than a buck) in return of the complete dump. However, it seems that there is actually nothing to worry about. Hold Security CEO Alex Holden said that a large number of those 1.17 Billion accounts credentials turned out to be duplicate an

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

The world's most notorious financial hacking operation disrupted by Russian authorities in November, when they raided the offices associated with a Moscow-based film and production company named 25th Floor . According to the Russian authorities, 25th Floor was allegedly involved in distributing the notorious password-stealing malware known as Dyre Banking Trojan . Malware Costs Hundreds of $$$ Millions in Losses The Dyre banking Trojan was typically distributed via spam campaigns and was responsible for over hundreds of millions of dollars in losses at banking and financial institutions, including Bank of America Corp, PayPal, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Dyre , also known as Dyreza , first appeared in July 2014 and updated to target Windows 10 systems and its newest Edge browser. However, Dyre has not been in use since the November raid, according to cyber security experts, who said the raid represents Russia's biggest effort up to date in cracking down

SCADA system has always been an interesting target for cyber crooks, given the success of Stuxnet malware that was developed by the US and Israeli together to sabotage the Iranian nuclear facilities a few years ago, and " Havex " that previously targeted organizations in the energy sector. Now once again, hackers have used highly destructive malware and infected, at least, three regional power authorities in Ukraine, causing blackouts across the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine on 23rd December. The energy ministry confirmed it was investigating claims a cyber attack disrupted local energy provider Prykarpattyaoblenergo, causing the power outage that left half of the homes in Ivano-Frankivsk without electricity just before Christmas. According to a Ukrainian news service TSN, the outage was the result of nasty malware that disconnected electrical substations. Related Read: Dragonfly Russian Hackers Target 1000 Western Energy Firms . First Malware to