The CyberWire Daily

Bitdefender researchers have recently found the APT group StrongPity has been targeting victims in Turkey and Syria. Using watering hole tactics to selectively infect victims and deploying a three-tier C&C infrastructure to thwart forensic investigations, the APT group leveraged Trojanized popular tools, such as archivers, file recovery applications, remote connections applications, utilities, and even security software, to cover a wide range of options that targeted victims might be seeking...

North Korea harasses defectors. Researchers have been exploiting a bug in Emotet to inoculate systems against the malware for the past six months. CISA warns of KONNI spearphishing. RedCurl APT conducts corporate espionage. The US announces more restrictions on Huawei’s access to US-made chips. Chris Novak from Verizon on the evolving role of cyber insurance. Rick Howard on data loss prevention. And Australian schools are without email after an unpleasant experience with Reply-All...

Suspected patriotic hacktivists are defacing websites. A cryptomining worm is stealing AWS credentials. Cruise company Carnival suffered a ransomware attack that involved data theft. US measures against Huawei are expected to make things much more difficult for the Chinese company. Ben Yelin on new tools tracking cyber data on US borders. Our guest is Jesse Rothstein from ExtraHop on what happens to enterprise security when the network goes dark...

Phone spearphishing is catching on after the Twitter hack. Taiwan blames China for hacking government agencies. FritzFrog botnet is cryptomining, for now. Whoever’s behind GoldenSpy is trying to cover their tracks. WastedLocker ransomware is successful without stealing data. The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence releases its final report on Russian interference with the 2016 election. Joe Carrigan looks at shady SIM cards...

Ukraine warns that Russia’s Gamaredon Group is running a phishing campaign ahead of Ukraine’s independence day. CISA and the FBI publish details on a North Korean remote access Trojan. Google patches a serious Gmail flaw. Marriott faces another lawsuit over its 2018 data breach. The WannaRen ransomware operators have released a decryption key. Rob Lee from Dragos with lessons learned from recent virtual conferences...

Transparent Tribe upgrades Crimson RAT. Cuba, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia are also interested in influencing the upcoming US election. The University of Utah restored from backups after a ransomware attack, but paid the ransom to prevent the crooks from publishing stolen data. Uber’s former CSO has been charged with allegedly covering up a hack the company sustained in 2016. Justin Harvey from Accenture on how the pandemic has affected Incident Response...

Iranian wannabes successfully use Dharma ransomware against soft targets. SourMint hid an ad-fraud and info-stealing package in an SDK. A former US Army officer and sometime Government contractor is charged with working for the GRU. DarkSide ransomware rises as affiliates go into business on their own. Awais Rashid from the University of Bristol on aligning cyber security metrics with business goals. Rick Howard talks data loss prevention with members of the Hash Table...

Security trends during the pandemic include shifts in underworld markets and some enduring changes in the way organizations approach cybersecurity. Discount phones come preloaded with adware and fleeceware. TikTok files its lawsuit. Ben Yelin on the Massachusetts Attorney General creating a data privacy office. Our guest is Nitzan Miron from Barracuda Networks on how brick & mortar shops have accelerated their shift online. And spoofing a Bitcoin exchange to spread malware...

Several Magecart campaigns turn out to be the work of one gang. The unfortunate persistence of DDoS-for-hire services. Ransomware’s growing sophistication as a class of criminal enterprise. Andrea Little Limbago from Interos on supply chain attacks & risks. Our guest is Mark Testoni from SAP's NS2 on how Covid-19 reshaped classified work. And hey kids: the BeagleBoyz are on a crime spree. For links to all of today's stories check out our CyberWire daily news brief: https://www.thecyberwire...

Denial-of-service attacks continue to cripple New Zealand’s NZX stock exchange. The Empire criminal market has exited, and done so with its users funds. US authorities have filed for civil forfeiture of Hidden Cobra’s stolen crytpo assets. An Instagram hijacking campaign is under way. Qbot and Emotet are back, and together again. The former Green Beret who allegedly spied for the GRU offers an insight into his (alleged) motives...