Russian Hackers Hit Business Systems at U.S. Nuclear Power and Energy Companies
The Washington Post has reported that Russian hackers were behind last week’s intrusions in the business systems of U.S. nuclear power and other energy companies in what appears to be an effort to assess their networks. U.S. officials have disputed some of last week’s reports, stating that there is no evidence that the hackers breached or disrupted the core systems controlling operations at the plants, stating that the public was not at risk. Read more.
Trump to Join Forces with Putin in Building Impenetrable Cyber Unit
Following a report over the weekend that President Trump and President Putin would partner to build an "impenetrable cyber unit," Trump is now taking a step back from this effort. Announced in a tweet, the statement from Trump, "raised eyebrows" from intelligence officials and lawmakers, in the midst of investigations into Russia's involvement in last year's election hacking. Read more.
Android Ransomware Threatens to Expose Browsing History
A form of Android ransomware called LeakerLocker threatens to send the victim’s private information and browsing history to all of their contacts, reports ZDNet. The ransomware skips the typical encryption of files, and claims to have made a backup of the data on the device, and threatens to share it with all of the user’s phone and email contacts. Read more.
Security Experts Warn of Account Risks after Verizon Customer Data Leak
Millions of Verizon customer accounts could still be at risk after a data exposure by an Israeli company working for the phone giant. Chris Vickery, director of cyber risk research at security firm UpGuard, found as many as 14 million customer records for the past six months on an exposed and unprotected Amazon S3 cloud server in late June. Read more.
A breach affected 14 Trump Hotel properties—among others—when hackers gained unauthorized access by targeting third-party reservation systems. Read more.
Free Scanner Finds 50,000 Eternal Blue Vulnerable Systems
More than 50,000 computers vulnerable to the NSA-linked EternalBlue exploit were found by a free vulnerability scanner in recent weeks. The tool was designed to provide network administrators with visibility into the EternalBlue-vulnerable machines in their networks, but without actually exploiting the flaw. Read more.
Powerful Israeli Smartphone Spyware Targets Mexico’s Missing Student Investigators
In recent months, one of the most powerful cell phone surveillance tools ever seen has been spreading across Mexico from the Israeli company NSO Group. Spyware called Pegasus has been found targeting Mexican politicians, activists, scientists and journalists, among others. Now, researchers say it’s going after a new group: the organization tasked with investigating the disturbing disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Guerrero in 2014. Read more.
