Cybercrime

One of the FBI’s most wanted men linked to ransomware gang REvil is living freely in a Siberian city with no sign the Russian authorities are acting to detain him.

DailyMail.com tracked suspected super-hacker Yevgeniy Polyanin, 28, to a chic $380,000 (USD) home in Barnaul where he was seen driving his $74,000 Toyota Land Cruiser 200, evidently feeling untouchable.

His wife Sofia, 28, openly runs an upscale social media baking business – including racy hen party cupcakes decorated with male genitalia – while he is accused by the US authorities of extorting millions of dollars from American businesses.

The FBI has launched an investigation after thousands of fake email messages were sent from one of its servers warning of a possible cyber-attack.

The government agency said the incident on Saturday morning was part of an “ongoing situation”, but provided no further details.

The messages purported to be from the US Department of Homeland Security.

They claimed to be a warning about a supposed threat and were titled: “Urgent: Threat actor in systems.”

One cybersecurity expert says the cyberattack on the Newfoundland and Labrador health-care system may be the worst in Canadian history, and has implications for national security.

David Shipley, the CEO of a cybersecurity firm in Fredericton, said he’s seen similar breaches before, but usually on a smaller scale.

“We’ve never seen a health network takedown this large, ever,” Shipley said in an interview with CBC News. “The severity of this is what really sets it apart.”

Secretive gangs are hacking the computers of governments, firms, even hospitals, and demanding huge sums. But if we pay these ransoms, are we creating a ticking time bomb?

They have the sort of names that only teenage boys or aspiring Bond villains would dream up (REvil, Grief, Wizard Spider, Ragnar), they base themselves in countries that do not cooperate with international law enforcement and they don’t care whether they attack a hospital or a multinational corporation. Ransomware gangs are suddenly everywhere, seemingly unstoppable – and very successful.

How much personal information do you share on your social media profile pages?

Name, location, age, job role, marital status, headshot? The amount of information people are comfortable with posting online varies.

But most people accept that whatever we put on our public profile page is out in the public domain.

So, how would you feel if all your information was catalogued by a hacker and put into a monster spreadsheet with millions of entries, to be sold online to the highest paying cyber-criminal?

The gang behind a “colossal” ransomware attack has demanded $70m (£50.5m) paid in Bitcoin in return for a “universal decryptor” that it says will unlock the files of all victims.

The REvil group claims its malware, which initially targeted US IT firm Kaseya, has hit one million “systems”.

This number has not been verified and the exact total of victims is unknown.

However, it does include 500 Swedish Coop supermarkets and 11 schools in New Zealand.

Experts are sounding the alarm about potential cyberattacks on the Tokyo Summer Olympics from those looking to create chaos at the already embattled event.

The concerns come after a year of escalating cyberattacks against a range of institutions, and as global tensions have skyrocketed during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

About 200 US businesses have been hit by a “colossal” ransomware attack, according to a cyber-security firm.

Huntress Labs said the hack targeted Florida-based IT company Kaseya before spreading through corporate networks that use its software.

Kaseya said in a statement on its own website that it was investigating a “potential attack”.

Huntress Labs said it believed the Russia-linked REvil ransomware gang was responsible.

In 2016 North Korean hackers planned a $1bn raid on Bangladesh’s national bank and came within an inch of success – it was only by a fluke that all but $81m of the transfers were halted, report Geoff White and Jean H Lee. But how did one of the world’s poorest and most isolated countries train a team of elite cyber-criminals?

It all started with a malfunctioning printer. It’s just part of modern life, and so when it happened to staff at Bangladesh Bank they thought the same thing most of us do: another day, another tech headache. It didn’t seem like a big deal.

But this wasn’t just any printer, and it wasn’t just any bank.

Bangladesh Bank is the country’s central bank, responsible for overseeing the precious currency reserves of a country where millions live in poverty.

The group of hackers who swiped source code from game company Electronic Arts pulled off the stunt by tricking EA’s IT support team on Slack, according to Motherboard.

The cyber thieves made off with some 780 gigabytes of data, including the source code for soccer simulator FIFA 21 and its matchmaking server, and the Frostbite engine, which powers most of EA’s games – including the Battlefield and Madden franchises. The code has now been put up for sale on the dark web.

The US branch of the Brazilian meat processor company JBS has paid $11 million worth of bitcoin to cyber-criminals who breached its computer systems and held them for ransom, its chief executive has revealed.

“It was very painful to pay the criminals, but we did the right thing for our customers,” Andre Nogueira, the CEO of JBS USA Holdings Inc, told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. He added that the ransom payment was made after the majority of JBS plants had resumed operations.

Washington (CNN)US investigators have recovered millions of dollars in cryptocurrency paid in ransom to hackers whose attack prompted the shutdown of the key East Coast pipeline last month, according to people briefed on the matter.

The Justice Department on Monday is expected to announce details of the operation led by the FBI with the cooperation of the Colonial Pipeline operator, the people briefed on the matter said.
The ransom recovery is a rare outcome for a company that has fallen victim to a debilitating cyberattack in the booming criminal business of ransomware.