Cybersecurity

SolarWinds hack got emails of top DHS officials

Suspected Russian hackers gained access to email accounts belonging to the Trump administration’s head of the Department of Homeland Security and members of the department’s cybersecurity staff whose jobs included hunting threats from foreign countries, The Associated Press has learned. The intelligence value of the hacking of then-acting Secretary Chad Wolf and his staff is […]

General says attacks by foreign hackers are 'clarion call'

The U.S. Cyber Command conducted more than two dozen operations aimed at thwarting interference in last November’s presidential election, the general who leads the Pentagon’s cyber force said Thursday. Gen. Paul Nakasone did not describe the nature of the operations in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee but said they were designed “to get […]

FireEye CEO: Reckless Microsoft hack unusual for China

Cyber sleuths have already blamed China for a hack that exposed tens of thousands of servers running its Exchange email program to potential hacks. The CEO of a prominent cybersecurity firm says it now seems clear China also unleashed an indiscriminate, automated second wave of hacking that opened the way for ransomware and other cyberattacks. […]

US charges North Korean computer programmers in global hacks

The Justice Department has charged three North Korean computer programmers in a broad range of global hacks, including a destructive attack targeting an American movie studio, and in the attempted theft and extortion of more than $1.3 billion from banks and companies, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. The newly unsealed indictment builds off an earlier criminal […]

UAE Central Bank bolsters cybersecurity with attack simulation

The Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) conducted on Sunday a first-of-its-kind cyberattack simulation exercise designed to test the resilience of the country’s banking sector against cyber threats. “The exercise affirms CBUAE’s preparedness to prevent or mitigate cyber threats that may cause disruptions to the UAE’s economy and financial stability,” a statement by CBUAE explained. […]

Cybersecurity firm: Booting hackers a complex chore

Efforts to assess the impact of a more than seven-month-old cyberespionage campaign blamed on Russia — and boot the intruders — remain in their early stages, says the cybersecurity firm that discovered the attack. The hack has badly shaken the U.S. government and private sector. The firm, FireEye, released a tool and a white paper […]

EU regulator: Hackers 'manipulated' stolen vaccine documents

The European Union’s drug regulator said Friday that COVID-19 vaccine documents stolen from its servers by hackers have been not only leaked to the web, but “manipulated.” The European Medicines Agency said that an ongoing investigation showed that hackers obtained emails and documents from November related to the evaluation of experimental coronavirus vaccines. The agency, […]

New Zealand central bank says data system hacked

New Zealand’s central bank said Sunday that one of its data systems has been breached by an unidentified hacker who potentially accessed commercially and personally sensitive information. A third party file sharing service used by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to share and store sensitive information had been illegally accessed, the Wellington-based bank said […]

US: Hack of federal agencies 'likely Russian in origin'

Top national security agencies confirmed Tuesday that Russia was likely responsible for a massive hack of U.S. government departments and corporations, rejecting President Donald Trump’s claim that China might be to blame. The rare joint statement represented the U.S. government’s first formal attempt to assign responsibility for the breaches at multiple agencies and to assign […]

German government backs bill requiring 5G security pledge

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet approved a bill Wednesday that would require companies involved in setting up critical infrastructure such as high-speed 5G networks to guarantee that their equipment can’t be used for sabotage, espionage or terrorism. The bill, which now goes to parliament, seeks to address concerns that vendors such as Chinese tech company […]