U.S. Indicts Six Russian Officers Tied to One of the World’s Most Destructive Hacking Groups
The U.S. unsealed charges today against six Russian intelligence officers who are allegedly members of the elite Russian hacking organization known as Sandworm—a group believed to be behind some of the most destructive cyberattacks in history. The charges come weeks after several indictments targeting Chinese and Iranian hackers and just 15 days before the U.S. presidential election…
Businesses Plan to Spend More on Cybersecurity, Despite Shaky Economic Forecast
Record unemployment. A surge in bankruptcies. Warnings of an economic slowdown. And… an increase in cybersecurity spending?
More than half of the businesses surveyed in a new PwC study said they plan to increase their cybersecurity budget in 2021, highlighting the sector’s resilience amid economic uncertainty…
Bellingcat Founder Eliot Higgins on Finding Truth in a World of Disinformation
In 2013, Eliot Higgins was an unemployed finance and administration worker blogging about the Syrian civil war from his home in Leicester, about 100 miles north of London. Since then, Higgins has turned his hobby into a full-fledged investigative journalism operation, with an office in the Netherlands and 18 full-time employees…
Why a Failed Election Hack Could Be Worse Than a Successful One
According to former intelligence and homeland security officials, it doesn’t matter how strong the U.S.’s cyber defenses are in the lead-up to the election, because even a failed or thwarted hack could still disrupt the vote—maybe even worse than a successful one…
Is It OK to Pay a Ransomware Demand? Depends Who You Ask
The U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a pair of advisories last week that could potentially shake up how organizations respond to ransomware attacks. But departments and agencies have issued a patchwork of guidelines in recent years on how to approach the issue, which might lead to some head-scratching…
‘Be Careful Who You Bite’: An Interview With the Businessman at the Center of One of Russia’s Biggest Treason Scandals
In 2013, Pavel Vrublevsky’s life turned upside down. After ten years of running a successful payments firm called ChronoPay, the Russian internet entrepreneur was convicted of orchestrating a distributed denial-of-service attack against a competing payments system used by Russian airline Aeroflot. Vrublevsky talked extensively with Recorded Future expert threat intelligence analyst Dmitry Smilyanets about this event and others in a recent interview…
How Iran’s Election Interference Efforts Have Evolved
Prior to 2016, Iran’s cyberoperations were primarily focused on the Middle East and its regional rivals, including Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Islamic State. Tehran’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election were limited and largely unsuccessful, according to a new report. But since President Trump took office, Iranian cyberoperations have focused on targeting a U.S. audience, and those efforts have increased as the 2020 election draws closer…
Russian Hacker Nikulin Sentenced to Over 7 Years in Prison for Tech Industry Breaches
A Russian national was sentenced Tuesday afternoon for breaching several technology firms, capping a drawn-out legal battle that has involved competing extradition attempts, luxury sports cars, and delays due to the coronavirus outbreak…
Your Voting Data Is Being Sold Online. But Who’s Buying It?
State and local governments make voter databases readily available to give academics, pollsters, and pretty much anyone who asks a nationwide impression of voter registration and election turnout. But on occasion—and especially before elections—this publicly available information makes its way onto sites where users typically share and sell breached databases and hacking tools…
Flurry of Indictments Signal a New U.S. Strategy for Combating Foreign Hackers
The federal government isn’t always known for its speed in the cybersecurity realm. But last week it moved at a breakneck pace to pull back the curtain on foreign cyberthreats. In a series of enforcement actions, the Department of Justice unsealed seven federal indictments charging 16 foreign nationals from China, Russia, Iran, and Malaysia with hacking-related crimes…