 Microsoft has claimed that Russia is intensifying its hacking campaign against Ukraine and its NATO allies. The global software firm believes that Russia is not only running active hacking campaigns but that it has stepped up its propaganda efforts. According to Microsoft, U.S. citizens consume Russian propaganda at levels that are comparable with publications such as The Wall Street Journal. More: - Microsoft, which recently launched a cybersecurity services division, is claiming that U.S. citizens consume Russian propaganda pages at a rate of around 80M views per month. The large amount of data that is extracted due to this exposure is then used for hacking campaigns that affect millions of people. Russian propaganda in Ukraine grew over 200% after the start of the war, while it grew by over 80% in the U.S.
- Russia has launched several cyber attacks against Ukraine since its invasion began. Continuing a long series of attacks since the 2014 war, Moscow launched a particularly effective cyberattack in January. The breach took down 70 different government websites. Hours before invading Ukraine, Russia attacked again, this time with a trojan known as Foxblade. The malware was intended to disrupt Ukraine's data centers and leave government institutions without the ability to communicate.
- Due to the increased efforts to protect Ukraine's digital infrastructure from both Ukraine and NATO allies, Russia has been unable to penetrate the country's network. Ukraine was able to migrate its data to cloud infrastructure in Western Europe, mitigating any possible risk. Now that Russia is not able to breach Ukrainian data as easily as it wants, it has turned its attention to Ukraine's allies, especially those who are geographically close. Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Turkey are seeing an increased amount of targeted cyber attacks and spying efforts, similar to the patterns that were seen in Ukraine. The U.S. also remains a priority for both Russia and Russian-backed hackers
- The malware currently used by Russia includes WhisperGate, FoxBlade, SonicVote, CaddyWiper DesertBlade, Industroyer2, Lasainraw, and FiberLake. All these strategies enable the threat actor to hack devices and/or machines to gain control. Infrastructure device hacks were seen in the Ukraine power grid hack in 2015.
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 China-backed hackers are deploying short-term hacks to hide their larger goals. A hacker group tracked as Bronze Starlight is believed to be behind the attacks, which are targeting victims in different parts of the world. More: - Bronze Starlight is a state-backed threat actor, possibly related to Bronze Riverside. The latter has been known for breaches since at least 2017. The collective specializes in stealing valuable Intellectual Property that the government may potentially want to analyze. Bronze Starlight has been active since early 2021. The group has breached different companies in the U.S., Lithuania, Brazil, Japan, etc.
- The group has proven difficult to track due to the fact that it creates its own ransomware and changes its names, which generates the appearance that its attacks come from different threat actors.
- Bronze Starlight utilizes Hui Loader, a malware that has been used for a long time. It has been updated several times since 2015. Around 21 victims are thought to have been breached by the group so far, with around 75% of the stolen IPs believed to be of potential interest to the Chinese government.
- After deploying Hui, the group uses Cobalt Strike Beacon to gain control and then extract data. The group has targeted companies in industries that have significant financial resources. However, it has not been particularly interested in asking for ransom as much as it has been in getting data.
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 A message from SECURITY COMPASS Current approaches to Threat Modeling simply don’t work. - They are manual and inconsistent
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 Scalper bots have created administrative chaos in Israel, as a potential solution created for a backlog of passport applications has turned into a major problem. The government is unable to stop the bots at the moment. More: - Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many administrative appointments were canceled, with passport applications being one of the procedures that were blocked for many months. With 700,000 applications in backlog, a bot was created to help citizens find an appointment.
- The bot, called Gamkenbot, was built to automatically reserve an appointment when it finds one that is free. Threat actors manipulated the bot so that all free appointments are automatically taken. The hackers then negotiate with citizens and sell the appointments for a profit. These negotiations take place over communication apps such as Telegram.
- The Israeli government is currently unable to stop the bot because doing so would create an even larger backlog of unsolved administrative tasks for potentially millions of people.
Zoom Out: - Israel suffered the largest cyberattack in its history a few months ago, when multiple government websites were shut down due to a DDoS attack managing to bring servers down. While the threat actor was not tracked, it was hinted that Iran may have been behind the campaign.
- Israel is not the only government that has struggled with hackers. According to statistics that were reported, almost 70% of governments around the world in 2021 struggled with at least one breach.
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 A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has introduced a bill that would limit the exportation of data to China and Russia. The bill would enable the U.S. government to specifically label what kind of data is too sensitive to be shared and would establish a ceiling on data exporting. More: - The bill, officially called the Protecting Americans' Data From Foreign Surveillance Act, was introduced by representatives Ron Wyden, Cynthia Lummis, Sheldon Whitehouse, Marco Rubio, and Bill Hagerty,
- The bill was passed after the senators pointed to the example of U.S. soldiers being tracked by foreign actors due to the cellphone data sold by data brokers. While the U.S. has the ability to stop the sale of entire companies to a foreign actor who may be deemed as a national security risk, the data that companies own can be bought by freely purchased by foreign governments and companies.
- This bill would deal with private information such as healthcare records, web browsing history, credit card purchasing history, etc. If the bill were to pass, a list of low-risk and high-risk countries would be compiled. Congress would be able to add or remove countries from the list after a mandatory 180 days. All procedures would be completed in coordination with the Secretary of Commerce, who would be the main actor.
- The Secretary of Commerce would provide an export license to companies that sell data to countries on the list. Those who break the new law could be sentenced to 20 years in prison or face $1M in fines.
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 ConductorOne has announced that it raised a $15M Series A round. The startup provides products that aim to make cloud integration easier for its clients. More: - ConductorOne aims to decrease the risk of companies being hacked and having their permission levels be abused, by providing a database with the exact time that a user spent on a service, or the exact hour when an employee accessed a certain file.
- By automating this process, the company believes it can help companies both become safer and more productive. The company previously raised a $5M round plans to use its funds to hire dozens of new employees. It is currently staffed by only 17.
- Privilege escalation attacks are common in the cyberhacking space. Microsoft recently patched a bug that allowed threat actors to gain unauthorized access through privilege escalation using one of its cloud products, Azure. In 2021, a vulnerability in Log4j made all Java servers vulnerable to being hacked. Windows 10 and 11, two of the most popular operating systems, were susceptible to being hacked by remote code execution. Besides Windows, operating systems such as Linux have also been vulnerable to this type of attack. The Dirty Pipe flaw allowed hackers to breach users and change their log-in credentials.
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Quick Hits: - During uncertain times, customer-centric businesses stay afloat. Find out why in this deep dive.
- Hadrian announced an $11.07M funding round, led by HV Capital. The startup aims to help companies identify their cybersecurity weaknesses through an automated simulation system.
- Microsoft announced that it is launching a new cyber-academy in India, with the aim of training 6000 students and providing 1500 internships in the field.
- Cybersecurity companies are proving to be some of the best financial performers in the market currently, leading to say that this trend proves security may become a priority for all companies in the near future.
- Indian company Grab is denying reports that it was breached by a cyberattack, with the reports initially beginning due to a tweet by Malaysian hacker group Malaysian Dragonforce.
- Concerned about your SME’s security? Discover what a Zero Trust strategy entails — and how to use it to your advantage.
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 |  | Arbër is an Inside writer who also has experience in entrepreneurship. He has experience covering Consumer Tech, Venture Capital, NFTs, Crypto, etc. Arbër holds a Bachelor's degree in Business from XAMK University in Finland. When he is not reading(and writing) business news, he chooses to watch sports or anime...and then read news about sports or anime. |   | | Editor | Gregory Bridgman is a writer and researcher with an academic background in politics and the philosophy of science and technology. He holds a BA from the University of Cape Town, an MS from University College London, and is currently completing a PhD at the University of Cambridge. He is interested in climate issues, technological changes, and the implications of the fourth industrial revolution. | |
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