Mad Money Manifesto(5)
2-21-22
Monday, February 21, 2022 //(IG): BB //Weekly Sponsor: ISG
NFT marketplace OpenSea is investigating a phishing hack
FROM THE MEDIA: NFT marketplace OpenSea is investigating a “phishing attack” that no longer appears to be active, the company’s chief executive said late Saturday. “We don’t believe it’s connected to the OpenSea website. It appears 32 users thus far have signed a malicious payload from an attacker, and some of their NFTs were stolen,” Devin Finzer said on Twitter. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, have surged in popularity over the past year. Ownership of these assets is recorded on a blockchain — a digital ledger similar to the networks that underpin bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Unlike most currencies, however, a person can’t exchange one NFT for another as they would with dollars or other assets. Each NFT is unique and acts as a collector’s item that can’t be duplicated, making them rare by design. Some of the stolen NFTs have been returned, Finzer said. In a series of tweets, Finzer dispelled rumors that the hack was worth $200 million. Finzer said the hacker “has $1.7 million of ETH in his wallet from selling some of the stolen NFTs.”
READ THE STORY: CNBC
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Decoding cyber crime (India)
FROM THE MEDIA: Pragna L Krupa anchors a session for our readers with DCP No
the hot topic In a first of its kind initiative, Bangalore Mirror interacted with the Deputy Commissioner of Police, North East, Anoop A Shetty who answered queries through his Twitter account said that earlier the crimes used to happen through skimming of ATM cards and now it has become much easier to do. “I once received a call from an executive claiming to be from an online shopping site who told me that my order was cancelled and they would refund the money. The person even read the order ID and details and asked me to share my Google pay number but I refused as I couldn’t believe him. I received my order after a week. There are many ways where the data can be leaked. A very primitive way is the data being leaked by one of the employees to his friends and others. Another way is by hacking the database of a company and posting it on the darkweb or any other platform where the data is sold to someone else. Most companies have third parties to handle their data which could be misused. Any delivery vendors will be involved to deliver the product who gets the data from the warehouse which could also be misused. If a person books a product through the website or an application, the company will send a notification or an email to alert the customer if there are any changes in delivery of the product. It is best to avoid such calls or share any info until you receive an update on the app. It is difficult to identify over the call and if the person starts to ask for UPI details or requests to make any payment, it is safe to end the call and wait for the company to send an official email as no company would call customers asking them to pay in the middle of the delivery. It would be either pay at the time of order or cash on delivery.
READ THE STORY: Bangalore Mirror
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North Korean Hackers Launder Crypto Using Sophisticated Techniques
FROM THE MEDIA: The Lazarus Group will “continue to adapt its cybercrime tactics” to attack companies from the financial and crypto sectors, the CNAS alerted. According to a recent analysis, the Pyongyang-led cybercrime organization – the Lazarus Group – employs advanced techniques to steal and launder cryptocurrencies. The gang has shown “remarkable adaptation to evolving regulation,” the report warned. While China and Russia traditionally captivate the attention of most democratic governments concerned about cyber security, totalitarian North Korea is gradually emerging as a leader in such attacks. In its most recent report, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) warned about a Pyongyang-led cybercrime organization known as the Lazarus Group. The latter has transformed from a “rogue team of hackers to a masterful army of cybercriminals and foreign affiliates” that steal hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crypto, the analysis added. The CNAS reminded that the infamous organization swiped around $300 million worth of digital assets in 2020 from the Singapore-based exchange KuCoin. The US think tank also pointed out the “sophisticated” hacking techniques deployed by the gang: “This major intrusion included a range of sophisticated hacking and laundering techniques, including a professional mixing service and the use of new DeFi platforms in an attempt to obfuscate the activity.”
READ THE STORY: Cryptopotato
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Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken with unexplained illness on White House grounds
FROM THE MEDIA: Since 2016, U.S. government officials overseas and their families have reported sudden, unexplained, brain injuries with symptoms of vertigo, confusion and memory loss. The CIA, FBI and State Department are investigating a theory that some of these officials were injured by an unseen weapon. Who might be targeting Americans and why are unknown. Incidents have been reported in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, but our reporting has found senior national security officials who say they were stricken in Washington and on the grounds of the White House. The former officials you are about to meet are revealing their experiences for the first time. They were responsible for helping to manage threats to national security. Olivia Troye: I covered any and all emerging threats, homeland security incidents domestically, so I covered whether it was from mass shootings to hurricanes, natural disasters… Olivia Troye was homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. She had served in the Pentagon, deployed to Iraq, served in the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Counterterrorism Center. At the White House, she worked in the 19th century Eisenhower Executive Office Building beside the West Wing. In the summer of 2019, she was descending stairs, toward the White House, when she felt she had been physically struck.
READ THE STORY: CBSnews
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Cyberattacks on oil surge as hackers target commodities, says S&P Global Platts
FROM THE MEDIA: At least 35 major cyberattacks on energy and oil infrastructure have taken place since 2017, according to S&P Global Platts. In its Oil Security Sentinel research released last Friday (Feb 18), S&P Global Platts said the US is the most targeted country, followed by the UK and Saudi Arabia. It said high-profile cyberattacks had occurred in the past year alone, highlighting the major ransomware attack on the computer network of the key fuel pipeline of the US East Coast, namely the Colonial Pipeline. The cyberattack and the ensuing shutdown of the pipeline resulted in fuel shortages, a run to gas stations and a spike in US gasoline prices. The report said Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company, also suffered an attack in the summer of 2021. The state oil giant of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, suffered a data breach in which cyberattackers stole one terabyte of proprietary data and were selling it on the dark web. The Aramco data leak was the subject of a ransom demand of US$50 million (about RM209.3 million) in cryptocurrency.
READ THE STORY: The Edgemarkets
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A crypto crime crackdown? DOJ hires first director of National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.
FROM THE MEDIA: The Justice Department on Thursday announced its first director of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, Eun Young Choi, who will be charged with prosecuting criminal cases related to the use of cryptocurrency and digital assets. The rise of cryptocurrency has given criminals an avenue for cyberattacks, ransomware and extortion schemes, as well as trafficking narcotics and selling illicit goods online in an untraceable manner, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a news release announcing Choi's appointment. “The NCET will play a pivotal role in ensuring that as the technology surrounding digital assets grows and evolves, the department in turn accelerates and expands its efforts to combat their illicit abuse by criminals of all kinds," Choi said in the release.
READ THE STORY: USA Today
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Criminal crypto-whales play the long game
FROM THE MEDIA: Criminals who have stolen cryptocurrency were among the biggest beneficiaries of surging prices as the amount of digital currency known to be from illicit activities skyrocketed nearly four times in 2021 to $US11 billion ($15 billion). Cryptocurrency had a record 2021, pushing over $US3 trillion in value in November 2021, while bitcoin, which makes up around a third of cryptocurrency, hit a record before crashing more than 40 per cent to Monday. New research by Chainalysis, the New York firm advising Australia’s Commonwealth Bank on its crypto program, shows that the $US11 billion worth of funds from illicit sources was up from just $US3 billion at the end of 2020, and $US9.8 billion of it was stolen. “The funds held by criminals have been held for a very long time,” Chainalysis director of research Kim Grauer told The Australian Financial Review. “We saw with the Bitfinex hack, they were holding the funds since 2016. Not many hacks are making away with that kind of money any more. It was a different world back then when it was valued so much less.”
READ THE STORY: AFR
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How drug gangs exploited Covid to snare new recruits
FROM THE MEDIA: Alisha is terrified. Terrified that one day soon she’ll open her front door to a policeman who’ll break the news that ‘my 15-year-old son has been murdered or that he’s responsible for the death of another kid’. This wasn’t a fear she ever used to have. Until Covid, Jayden was ‘jogging along OK. Busy, busy, busy with his boxing and the youth club’. But with lockdown he had no outlet for his energy. ‘He was crashing round our tiny flat like a tiger in a cage,’ she recalls. Online learning only exacerbated his frustration and sense of failure. He just couldn’t get the hang of it. He felt stupid and worthless. School just added more stress onto stress.’ Jayden grew depressed and barely emerged from his room. At school and immersed in his clubs, her son had been safe from the gangs in their part of South London. But stuck indoors, glued to his screen, he now scrolled endlessly through social media posts: cash stacked up on coffee tables, heavy gold chains with diamonds set between the links, teenagers posing with bags of weed and Rambo knives ‘the length of some children’s arms’. Posted by gang members to glorify themselves and lure in new members, the single mother tells me: ‘This is his reality now — there was no school or youth worker to tell him different. And he’s not listening to his mum.’ Now, she admitted, he stays away for days at a time. Her local authority was threatening to prosecute her for his non-attendance at school. How does he spend his days? Alisha fell silent but I could not help noticing a brand new and very expensive TV in the sitting room.
READ THE STORY: Daily Mail
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About this Product
These open source products are reviewed from analysts at InfoDom Securities and provide possible context about current media trends in regard to the realm of cyber security. The stories selected cover a broad array of cyber threats and are intended to aid readers in framing key publicly discussed threats and overall situational awareness. InfoDom Securities does not specifically endorse any third-party claims made in their original material or related links on their sites, and the opinions expressed by third parties are theirs alone. Contact InfoDom Securities at dominanceinformation@gmail.com