We have gathered the week’s most important cybersecurity news.
- A Russian court fined several major social networks millions of rubles for failing to remove content banned in Russia.
- Microsoft described a new attack on U.S. government systems, with Russian hackers again blamed.
- The FBI gained direct access to Have I Been Pwned and will upload compromised user credentials there.
In Russia, pressure on social networks continues
Foreign social networks must localize the databases of Russian users in Russia by July 1, the Roskomnadzor said. Otherwise they face fines.
Earlier, the agency demanded a response from Google, Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp to the previously sent request about the localization of Russians’ data.
Meanwhile, Russian courts continued fining social networks for failing to remove prohibited content. This week Twitter was fined 19 million rubles, Google — 3.5 million, Facebook — 26 million, TikTok — 1.5 million.
Roskomnadzor also threatened to slow Google’s traffic due to insufficient filtering of materials banned within the Russian Federation. But later Roskomnadzor head Andrey Lipov said fines are an effective lever of pressure on the company.
In turn, Google filed a lawsuit against Roskomnadzor in an attempt to challenge the agency’s actions.
Microsoft accuses Russian hackers of a new attack on U.S. government agencies
Microsoft identified a series of attacks on American organizations and said that they were carried out by the Russian hacker group Nobelium.
According to experts, the attacks targeted about 3,000 email accounts. The hackers used phishing emails. Their first target was the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Microsoft is convinced that Nobelium also orchestrated the SolarWinds breach.
Earlier, during hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Microsoft’s Brad Smith stated that the company has strong evidence of Russian intelligence involvement in the SolarWinds cyberattacks that affected numerous U.S. agencies.
France neutralised the darknet marketplace Le Monde Parallèle
French authorities reported a successful operation to stop the darknet marketplace Le Monde Parallèle.
🚨🏴☠️ #Darknet | The investigators from the Direction Nationale du Renseignement et des enquêtes @douane_france have just neutralised the platform “Le monde parallèle.”
➡️ It’s a severe blow against the Francophone darknet to continue hindering online threats pic.twitter.com/6jNx3wO1vk
— Olivier Dussopt (@olivierdussopt) May 21, 2021
On the site criminals traded stolen banking-card data, drugs, and weapons. They also used it to find partners for running illicit businesses or conducting operations.
Recall that in 2020 darknet markets’ cryptocurrency revenues surpassed $1.5 billion.
The Putin administration says it cannot help regulate the Internet because of a “critical situation”
The state has begun actively regulating the online environment, because “the current situation on the Internet has become critical,” said Tatiana Matveeva, head of the president’s administration for the development of information and communications technology and the infrastructure of communications.
She added that one of the year’s priorities is implementing a traffic-filtering system under the Runet law.
The FBI will upload compromised passwords to Have I Been Pwned
FBI personnel will gain direct access to Have I Been Pwned and will begin uploading data to the site’s Pwned Passwords section as soon as it is uncovered in investigations.
I’m very happy to announce that @haveibeenpwned’s Pwned Passwords is now open source under the @dotnetfdn. Now we’ve got some work to do: building an ingestion pipeline for new passwords provided by the @FBI on an ongoing basis. This is super cool 😎 https://t.co/iM17zemmwE
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) May 27, 2021
No personal data will be disclosed, the service’s founder Troy Hunt assured.
Kaspersky Lab reports ransomware attacks on Russian companies
At least several Russian companies have fallen victim to ransomware campaigns that blocked access to corporate data and demanded multi-million-ruble sums, according to Kaspersky Lab researchers.
Technically, the attacks differ from campaigns using crypto-ransomware, say experts:
“This time the attackers used not a specially created piece of malware, but the built-in BitLocker disk-encryption technology included in Windows.”
Also on ForkLog:
- The DeFi project BurgerSwap lost $7.2 million due to the attack.
- Russia introduced fines for concealing electronic money; experts said cryptocurrencies would not be affected.
- Analysts found that Hydra vendors are being forced to withdraw cryptocurrency via rubles.
- The head of Roskomnadzor warned that access to non-compliant VPN services will be restricted in Russia.
- The Binance Smart Chain project was suspected of being a scam; the team said it had been hacked.
- Researchers learned that CryptoCore attacks on Bitcoin exchanges were conducted by Lazarus hackers.
Experts warned of bugs in the SafeMoon DeFi project that could allow assets to be withdrawn worth $20 million.
What to read this weekend?
We look at Palantir Technologies, the company dubbed “the firm that knows everything about you.” Read about how its algorithms work and why privacy advocates oppose Palantir’s technology in ForkLog’s exclusive.
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