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Two individuals have been arrested in Australia and the U.S. in connection with an alleged scheme to develop and distribute a remote access trojan called Hive RAT (previously Firebird). The U.S. Justice Department (DoJ)  said  the malware "gave the malware purchasers control over victim computers and enabled them to access victims' private communications, their login credentials, and other personal information." A 24-year-old individual named Edmond Chakhmakhchyan (aka "Corruption") from Van Nuys in Los Angeles, California, was taken into custody after he was caught selling a license of Hive RAT to an undercover employee of a law enforcement agency. He has been charged with one count of conspiracy and one count of advertising a device as an interception device, each of which carries a penalty of five years in prison. Chakhmakhchyan pleaded not guilty and was ordered to stand trial on June 4, 2024. Court documents allege a partnership between the malware...

A Brazilian law enforcement operation has led to the arrest of several Brazilian operators in charge of the  Grandoreiro  malware. The Federal Police of Brazil  said  it served five temporary arrest warrants and 13 search and seizure warrants in the states of São Paulo, Santa Catarina, Pará, Goiás, and Mato Grosso. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET, which provided additional assistance in the effort, said it uncovered a design flaw in Grandoreiro's network protocol that helped it to identify the victimology patterns. Grandoreiro  is one of the many Latin American banking trojans such as Javali, Melcoz, Casabeniero, Mekotio, and Vadokrist, primarily targeting countries like Spain, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. It's known to be active since 2017. In late October 2023, Proofpoint  revealed  details of a phishing campaign that distributed an updated version of the malware to targets in Mexico and Spain. The banking trojan has capabilities to both stea...

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 Dutch police announced the arrest of three individuals in connection with a "large-scale" criminal operation involving data theft, extortion, and money laundering. The suspects include two 21-year-old men from Zandvoort and Rotterdam and an 18-year-old man without a permanent residence. The arrests were made on January 23, 2023. It's estimated that the hackers stole personal data belonging to tens of millions of individuals. This comprised names, addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, bank account numbers, credit cards, passwords, license plates, social security numbers, and passport details. The Politie said its cybercrime team started the investigation nearly two years ago, in March 2021, after a large Dutch company suffered a security breach. The name of the company was not disclosed but some of the firms that were hit by a cyber attack around that time included  RDC ,  Shell , and  Ticketcounter , the last of which was also a victim of an extortion att...

The Federal Police of Brazil on Wednesday announced it had arrested an individual for purported links to the notorious LAPSUS$ extortionist gang. The arrest was made as part of a new law enforcement effort, dubbed Operation Dark Cloud, that was launched in August 2022, the agency noted. Not much is known about the suspect other than the fact that the person could be a teenager. The Polícia Federal said it commenced its investigation in December 2021 following an attack on websites under Brazil's  Ministry of Health , resulting in the alleged exfiltration of 50TB of data and  temporary unavailability  of COVID-19 vaccination information of millions of citizens. Other federal government portals targeted by the LAPSUS$ group in Brazil include the Ministry of Economy, Comptroller General of the Union, and the Federal Highway Police. "The crimes determined in the police investigation are those of criminal organization, invasion of a computer device, interruption or distu...

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has arrested a 19-year-old teen from Sydney for allegedly attempting to leverage the data leaked following the Optus data breach late last month to extort victims. The suspect is said to have carried out a text message blackmail scam, demanding that the recipients transfer $2,000 to a bank account or risk getting their personal information misused for fraudulent activities. The source of the data, the agency said, was a sample database of 10,200 records that was posted briefly on a cybercrime forum accessible on the clearnet by an actor named "optusdata," before taking it down. Details of the scam were  previously shared  by 9News Australia reporter Chris O'Keefe on September 27, 2022. The AFP further said it executed a search warrant at the home of the offender, leading to the seizure of a mobile phone used to send the text messages to about 93 Optus customers. "At this stage it appears none of the individuals who received t...

The City of London Police on Friday revealed that it has arrested a 17-year-old teenager from Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking. "On the evening of Thursday 22 September 2022, the City of London Police arrested a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking," the agency  said , adding "he remains in police custody." The department said the arrest was made as part of an investigation in partnership with the U.K. National Crime Agency's cyber crime unit. No further details about the nature of the investigation were disclosed, although it's suspected that the law enforcement action may have something to do with the recent string of high-profile hacks aimed at  Uber  and  Rockstar Games . Both the intrusions are alleged to have been committed by the same threat actor, who goes by the name Tea Pot (aka teapotuberhacker). Uber, for its part, has pinned the breach on an attacker (or attackers) that it believes is associated with the LAPSUS$ extortion...

Dutch authorities on Friday announced the arrest of a software developer in Amsterdam who is alleged to be working for Tornado Cash, days after the U.S. sanctioned the decentralized crypto mixing service. The 29-year-old individual is "suspected of involvement in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering" through the service, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD)  said  in a statement. Although FIOD didn't reveal the name of the Tornado Cash engineer, The Block  identified  him as Alexey Pertsev, citing confirmation from his wife. "My husband didn't do anything illegal," she was quoted as saying. FIOD also alleged that "Tornado Cash has been used to conceal large-scale criminal money flows, including from (online) thefts of cryptocurrencies (so-called crypto hacks and scams)." The agency, which initiated an investigation into Tornado Cash in June 2022, further hinted it may make more arrests...

A 24-year-old Australian national has been charged for his purported role in the creation and sale of spyware for use by domestic violence perpetrators and child sex offenders. Jacob Wayne John Keen, who currently resides at Frankston, Melbourne, is said to have created the remote access trojan (RAT) when he was 15, while also administering the tool from 2013 until its shutdown in 2019 as part of a coordinated Europol-led exercise. "The Frankston man engaged with a network of individuals and sold the spyware, named Imminent Monitor (IM), to more than 14,500 individuals across 128 countries," the Australian Federal Police (AFP)  alleged  in a press release over the weekend. The defendant has been slapped with six counts of committing a computer offense by developing and supplying the malware, in addition to profiting off its illegal sale. Another woman, aged 42, who lives in the same home as the accused and is identified as his mother by  The Guardian , has also be...

Spanish law enforcement officials have announced the arrest of two individuals in connection with a cyberattack on the country's radioactivity alert network (RAR), which took place between March and June 2021. The act of sabotage is said to have disabled more than one-third of the sensors that are maintained by the Directorate-General for Civil Protection and Emergencies ( DGPCE ) and used to monitor excessive radiation levels across the country. The reason for the attacks is unknown as yet. "The two detainees, former workers, attacked the computer system and caused the connection of the sensors to fail, reducing their detection capacity even in the environment of nuclear power plants," the Policía Nacional  said . The law enforcement probe, dubbed Operation GAMMA, commenced in June 2021 in the immediate aftermath of the attack perpetrated against the RAR network, which is a mesh of 800 gamma radiation detection sensors deployed in various parts of the country to de...

A 37-year-old man from New York has been sentenced to four years in prison for buying stolen credit card information and working in cahoots with a cybercrime cartel known as the Infraud Organization. John Telusma, who went by the alias "Peterelliot," had previously pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy on October 13, 2021. He joined the gang in August 2011 and remained a member for five-and-a-half years. "Telusma was among the most prolific and active members of the Infraud Organization, purchasing and fraudulently using compromised credit card numbers for his own personal gain," the U.S. Justice Department (DoJ)  said . Infraud, a transnational cybercrime behemoth, operated for more than seven years, advertising its activities under the slogan "In Fraud We Trust," before its online infrastructure was dismantled by U.S. law enforcement authorities in February 2018. The rogue enterprise dabbled in the large-scale acquisition and sale ...

A year-long international investigation has resulted in the arrest of the suspected head of the SilverTerrier cybercrime group by the Nigeria Police Force. "The suspect is alleged to have run a transnational cybercrime syndicate that launched mass phishing campaigns and business email compromise schemes targeting companies and individual victims," Interpol  said  in a statement. Operation Delilah, as the coordinated international effort is called, involved tracking the 37-year-old Nigerian man's physical movements, before he was apprehended at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos in March 2022. Singapore-headquartered cybersecurity company Group-IB said it provided threat intelligence that led to the arrest as part of the police operation that commenced in May 2021. According to Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 , which also assisted in the probe into SilverTerrier activity, the unnamed suspect is said to have been active since 2015 and involved in the cr...

The City of London Police on Friday disclosed that it has charged two of the seven teenagers, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old, who were arrested last week for their alleged connections to the LAPSUS$ data extortion gang. "Both teenagers have been charged with: three counts of unauthorized access to a computer with intent to impair the reliability of data; one count of fraud by false representation and one count of unauthorized access to a computer with intent to hinder access to data," Detective Inspector Michael O'Sullivan, from the City of London Police,  said  in a statement. In addition, the unnamed 16-year-old minor has been charged with one count of causing a computer to perform a function to secure unauthorized access to a program. The charges come as the City of London Police moved to arrest seven suspected LAPSUS$ gang members aged between 16 and 21 on March 25, with the agency  telling  The Hacker News that all the individuals had been subsequently "re...

The City of London Police has arrested seven teenagers between the ages of 16 and 21 for their alleged connections to the prolific LAPSUS$ extortion gang that's linked to a recent burst of attacks targeting NVIDIA, Samsung, Ubisoft, LG, Microsoft, and Okta. "The City of London Police has been conducting an investigation with its partners into members of a hacking group," Detective Inspector, Michael O'Sullivan, said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "Seven people between the ages of 16 and 21 have been arrested in connection with this investigation and have all been released under investigation. Our enquiries remain ongoing." The development, which was first  disclosed  by BBC News, comes after a report from Bloomberg  revealed  that a 16-year-old Oxford-based teenager is the mastermind of the group. It's not immediately clear if the minor is one among the arrested individuals. The said teen, under the online alias White or Breachbase, is al...

Yaroslav Vasinskyi , a Ukrainian national, linked to the Russia-based  REvil ransomware group  has been extradited to the U.S. to face charges for his role in carrying out the file-encrypting malware attacks against several companies, including Kaseya last July. The 22-year-old had been previously arrested in Poland in October 2021, prompting the U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) to  file charges  of conspiracy to commit fraud and related activity in connection with computers, damage to protected computers, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Ransomware is the digital equivalent of extortion wherein cybercrime actors encrypt victims' data and take it hostage in return for a monetary payment to recover the data, failing which the stolen information is published online or sold to other third-parties. According to the DoJ, in addition to the headline-grabbing attacks on JBS and Kaseya, REvil is said to have propagated its infection to more than 175,000 computer...

A coordinated law enforcement operation has resulted in the arrest of 11 members allegedly belonging to a Nigerian cybercrime gang notorious for perpetrating business email compromise (BEC) attacks targeting more than 50,000 victims in recent years. The disruption of the BEC network is the result of a ten-day investigation dubbed  Operation Falcon II  undertaken by the Interpol along with participation from the Nigeria Police Force's Cybercrime Police Unit in December 2021. Cybersecurity firms  Group-IB  and Palo Alto Networks'  Unit 42 , both of which shared information on the threat actors and their infrastructure, said six of the 11 suspects are believed to be a part of a prolific group of Nigerian cyber actors known as SilverTerrier (aka TMT). BEC attacks, which began to gain dominance in 2013, are  sophisticated scams  that target legitimate business email accounts through social engineering schemes to infiltrate corporate networks and subseq...

12 people have been detained as part of an international law enforcement operation for orchestrating ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure and large organizations that hit over 1,800 victims across 71 countries since 2019, marking the latest action against cybercrime groups. The arrests were made earlier this week on October 26 in Ukraine and Switzerland, resulting in the seizure of cash worth $52,000, five luxury vehicles, and a number of electronic devices that the agencies said are being examined to uncover new forensic evidence of their malicious activities and pursue new investigative leads. The suspects have been primarily linked to LockerGoga, MegaCortex, and Dharma ransomware, in addition to being in charge of  laundering the ransom payments  by funneling the ill-gotten Bitcoin proceeds through mixing services and cashing them out. "The targeted suspects all had different roles in these professional, highly organised criminal organisations," Europol  ...

Ukrainian law enforcement authorities on Monday disclosed the arrest of a hacker responsible for the creation and management of a "powerful botnet" consisting of over 100,000 enslaved devices that was used to carry out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and spam attacks on behalf of paid customers. The unnamed individual, from the Ivano-Frankivsk region of the country, is also said to have leveraged the automated network to detect vulnerabilities in websites and break into them as well as stage brute-force attacks in order to guess email passwords. The Ukrainian police agency said it conducted a raid of the suspect's residence and seized their computer equipment as evidence of illegal activity. "He looked for customers on the closed forums and Telegram chats and payments were made via blocked electronic payment systems," the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU)  said  in a press statement. The payments were facilitated via WebMoney, a Russian money transfer p...

The operators of the Mozi IoT botnet have been taken into custody by Chinese law enforcement authorities, nearly two years after the malware emerged on the threat landscape in September 2019. News of the arrest, which originally  happened  in June, was  disclosed  by researchers from Netlab, the network research division of Chinese internet security company Qihoo 360, earlier this Monday, detailing its involvement in the operation. "Mozi uses a P2P [peer-to-peer] network structure, and one of the 'advantages' of a P2P network is that it is robust, so even if some of the nodes go down, the whole network will carry on, and the remaining nodes will still infect other vulnerable devices, that is why we can still see Mozi spreading," said Netlab, which spotted the botnet for the first time in late 2019. The development also comes less than two weeks after Microsoft Security Threat Intelligence Center  revealed  the botnet's new capabilities that enable it t...

Law enforcement authorities with the Interpol have apprehended a threat actor responsible for targeting thousands of unwitting victims over several years and staging malware attacks on telecom companies, major banks, and multinational corporations in France as part of a global phishing and credit card fraud scheme. The two-year investigation, dubbed  Operation Lyrebird  by the international, intergovernmental organization, resulted in the arrest of a Moroccan citizen nicknamed Dr HeX, cybersecurity firm Group-IB disclosed today in a report shared with The Hacker News. Dr HeX is said to have been "active since at least 2009 and is responsible for a number of cybercrimes, including phishing, defacing, malware development, fraud, and carding that resulted in thousands of unsuspecting victims," the Singapore-headquartered company said . The cyber attacks involved deploying a phishing kit consisting of web pages that spoofed banking entities in the country, followed by sendin...

Law enforcement officials in Ukraine, in coordination with authorities from the U.S. and Australia, last week shut down one of the world's largest phishing services that were used to attack financial institutions in 11 countries, causing tens of millions of dollars in losses. The Ukrainian attorney general's office  said  it worked with the National Police and its Main Investigation Department to identify a 39-year-old man from the Ternopil region who developed a phishing package and a special administrative panel for the service, which were then aimed at several banks located in Australia, Spain, the U.S., Italy, Chile, the Netherlands, Mexico, France, Switzerland, Germany, and the U.K. Computer equipment, mobile phones, and hard drives were seized as part of five authorized searches conducted during the course of the operation. Security researcher Brian Krebs  noted  the raids were in connection with  U-Admin , a phishing framework that makes use of fake ...